


Bonding

by stew (julie)



Category: The Professionals (TV 1977)
Genre: Canon Compliant, M/M, Male Bonding, Original Character(s), Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1992-05-01
Updated: 1992-05-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:34:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23151040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/julie/pseuds/stew
Summary: Bodie declares that male bonding is a myth – but Doyle still thinks it’s a nice idea, so he starts thinking about how to make it happen with this unlikely partner that Cowley gave him.
Relationships: William Bodie/Ray Doyle
Kudos: 13





	Bonding

**Author's Note:**

> **Notes:** This fic is based in and around the first series episodes, in first transmission order. (I understand there’s some disagreement about what that order was or should be. For better or worse, I worked from the list given up the back of the book _The Complete Professionals_ (1986) by Dave Rogers.) 
> 
> **First published:** in the zine ‘Concupiscence’ #2 by Manacles Press in May 1992.

# Bonding 

♦ ♦ ♦

‘I killed a man today.’ Doyle stared into his mug of tea. ‘Shot him dead. Poor sod didn’t even know what hit him.’ 

And, when the hand reached to hold his, when it gripped his fingers in silent comfort, Doyle sighed. Part of him relied on the absolution of that hand grasping his. He feared that one day the crimes he’d committed against his fellow human beings in the name of justice would have mounted so high that this understanding would be denied him. ‘Poor bloody sod,’ he repeated helplessly. 

Ray Doyle was sitting with his mother at her kitchen table. London suburbia sprawled around them, a maze of innocents and criminals and killers. Doyle knew which of those categories he belonged to. 

‘It was him or Bodie,’ he continued in an explanation he nevertheless felt could not justify the action. 

‘You did what you had to do then,’ Eileen Doyle said with a mix of sorrow and pragmatism. 

Her son shrugged. He wondered how he felt about this man he had killed for but, like many things to do with Bodie, his emotions were elusive. 

‘Where is Bodie now?’ she asked. 

‘Don’t know. Drinking with the lads. You know the Red Lion would be out of business but for CI5.’ 

Silence for a moment. ‘Come on, tell me all about it,’ Eileen asked. She listened to the day’s events, hating all over again the dangers Ray Doyle faced, the choices he had to make. And glad that she could help him in this one small way. And forever afraid of the day when someone else would call – Bodie, or Cowley himself perhaps – and tell her the story of yet another death. 

♦

‘So where were you, Doyle?’ Bodie asked as he pulled out of the CI5 carpark in his favourite Capri Ghia. ‘A great time was had by all last night…’ 

‘What? Guzzling beer and telling old jokes?’ Doyle asked sceptically. He leaned back wearily in his seat – he’d had a long and restless night. 

‘Beer, darts – won twenty quid off Lucas. Then his bird showed up, and I almost won her off him, too. It was a good night.’ 

‘Sounds wonderful.’ 

Bodie shot his partner an amused look. ‘It’s been two years, Doyle. I’m going to stop asking you along one day.’ 

‘I just don’t see the point. I couldn’t wind down that way.’ 

‘So what do you do? What did you do last night?’ 

Doyle looked across at the man. It had indeed been two years since they’d been partnered, and he and Bodie were no closer than they’d been at the end of the CI5 training program. Sure, they made a great team on the job, had been blessed or cursed with a silent, empathic communication in the thick of it. But what on earth did they really know about each other? 

Maybe he’d give it one try. Doyle swallowed, and prepared himself for ridicule. It was a reaction he was used to. ‘Went to see my mum.’ 

‘Yeah? Visit her regularly?’ 

To Doyle’s surprise, Bodie seemed interested, in a low key sort of way. And not about to tease. Maybe a little more honesty wouldn’t hurt. ‘I tell her about work. That’s how I unwind.’ 

Bodie shrugged, looking about as the car came to a stop sign. He rarely came to a complete stop at these intersections – Doyle could have written him a thousand tickets for traffic infringements just in the past month. As Bodie accelerated through, he said, ‘Everyone’s got to have some way of coming down.’ 

‘You could have been killed yesterday.’ 

‘Yeah, but for my partner. That’s what Cowley gave me you for.’ 

If that was meant to divert Doyle, it didn’t work. ‘So you went out on the tiles with the guys.’ When Bodie frowned, Doyle elaborated, ‘That’s how you unwind, right?’ 

Bodie’s frown turned into a tiny wry smile. ‘You do that much? Back in the Met, with the other coppers after a day walking the beat on those flat feet?’ 

Silence for a moment. The tone had been teasing – in the way that Bodie often seemed to shut the world out – but Doyle found that once started he wanted to get through this. Just in case their partnership could ever mean anything but work. ‘A few times, early on,’ he replied. ‘But I never did fit in like that.’ And, truth be known, Doyle was a little envious of that easy friendship, that supportiveness and camaraderie. He himself was fated to never be _one of the boys_ – a case of mutual dislike and suspicion, no matter where he went. 

He wondered briefly what conclusions the other operatives would jump to if Doyle did one day accept Bodie’s invitation to join him and the rest for a drink after work. And how Bodie would react. 

‘Thought as much.’ Bodie was shaking his head, amused again. They were nearing the empty house that CI5 were staking out. When Lucas and McCabe saw them approaching, McCabe pulled their car out, and Bodie parked in the empty space they’d left. 

Bodie was silent for a while, and Doyle was unsure of how to resume the conversation. But Bodie eventually said, very seriously, ‘I’ll tell you a secret, Doyle.’ He looked his partner in the eye. ‘Male bonding is a myth.’ 

Doyle frowned. ‘What are you on about?’ 

‘You think we’re all friends, as good as family? No way. We have a drink and pass the time and talk about the football. No one says anything that matters a damn. Very superficial.’ 

‘So…’ Doyle said sceptically. ‘All your drinking mates – the guys in CI5, the ones you still see from the army – none of them matter a damn.’ 

‘That’s right. It’s not that they’re not good people, but –’ Bodie grinned over at him. ‘You haven’t been missing a thing.’ 

‘Guess not.’ The grin worried Doyle – maybe his partner was having him on. 

‘Nice idea, though, isn’t it?’ 

‘Yeah. Lovely.’ 

‘Hanging around with other men is my last idea of how to relax,’ Bodie said. ‘Too much competition.’ 

Doyle considered this bleak picture – said lightly, ‘And I thought it was just me.’ 

‘No, mate. We’re all alone. Islands.’ 

‘I had friends when I was in school. But none since.’ He sometimes missed those teenage days, solely because it had been comparatively easy to get to know people then. But none of the other kids had escaped the apparent necessity of erecting barriers as they grew up. And Doyle had needed stronger defences than most. These days he’d thought he was mostly resigned to being alone. 

‘There’s some women I’m friends with,’ Bodie was continuing. ‘That’s easier than men.’ 

‘Who?’ Doyle asked suspiciously. ‘Thought you were the easy come, easy go type.’ 

‘You haven’t met them, have you?’ 

‘Names. I want proof.’ 

‘Jennifer and Inger. For starters.’ 

‘Ah.’ But Doyle had had an idea. He wasn’t really alone; Bodie was sitting right there beside him, and maybe the answer to the solitude was as simple as that. There weren’t many other options when you worked in CI5, after all. Unfortunately it seemed that Bodie wasn’t as alone as Doyle. Still… ‘Nice idea, you said, though. Male bonding and all that?’ 

‘Yeah,’ was Bodie’s absent-minded response. 

How to go about making the idea a reality? He and Bodie already had a working partnership – how had they reached that? Easy – Cowley had taken two very different, very competitive and untrusting men, and thrown them in the deep end together. They had had to learn each other’s capabilities and responses, strengths and weaknesses. They’d worked together to eliminate those weaknesses, add to their strengths. Became a team that was more than the sum of its parts. And, with all that, with the life-and-death of their partnership, why was there nothing more between them when the pressure was off than poor acquaintance? Why didn’t they know each other beyond the needs of CI5? 

Well, Doyle was on his own here, without Cowley to force them through the obstacle course of friendship. He’d just have to do the best he could. And, knowing his luck, to misquote a book he’d read, he’d take that step in the dark and simply tread on a banana skin. But he had always been a fool, never an angel. 

♦ ♦ ♦

‘It was a long shot, and the wrong shot,’ Cowley said. _Disgruntled_ would be an appropriate British understatement for how he sounded right then. Some mad idealist named Nesbitt had threatened to put enough ADX into the water supply to kill thousands of people, and Cowley had lost the trail somewhere, had ended up at the wrong reservoir. They were going to have to give in to the madman’s demands. Cowley returned to the car parked by the water’s edge, to the radio. 

Doyle wasn’t convinced. Scraps of information, and sheer instinct, had led them to this place. He couldn’t believe they were wrong in adding two plus two to make the reservoir at the World Chemical Products Sports and Social Club. Nesbitt used to work there, after all. Doyle leant over the car door and carefully said, ‘Balloon doesn’t go up till five-thirty, sir.’ He could see Bodie sitting in the driver’s seat beside Cowley. Bodie was champing at the bit, frustrated at Cowley giving up when they were so close. 

‘It’s just five now,’ their boss observed. ‘No, that’s long enough.’ 

Bodie pleaded angrily, ‘Just give us a chance to check out the area.’ 

But Cowley’s first priority was always the innocent. ‘We’re talking about hundreds of thousands of lives.’ 

‘Come on, sir, just a couple of minutes,’ said Doyle. 

‘Just a couple of lousy minutes,’ Bodie cried out. Then it happened – Doyle knew he and Bodie were right, and knew that Bodie knew it, too. Maybe at that moment the imperative of the adrenalin urge to fight was stronger than the thought of those hundreds of thousands. It was certainly stronger than Cowley’s caution. And this was, after all, his and Bodie’s territory – not Cowley’s world of politicians and laws and deliberations. Between them, silently, they came to a decision – Doyle didn’t even have to look at his partner to read what that decision was. Bodie said, disgusted, ‘Oh, let’s go.’ 

And Doyle was already running, heading for the obvious shelter of the woods behind the reservoir – the fact that Bodie was a few feet away, matching him step for step, after that silent communication, was as much a cause of the adrenalin rush as anything else. 

The madman was there, all right. They caught Nesbitt and dragged him back to Cowley at the water’s edge. But Nesbitt had already set off the timer on the bomb he’d placed out on a float in the water. It was only a matter of minutes before the ADX would be released. 

Ignoring Cowley yet again, Bodie and Doyle clambered into a motorboat and took Nesbitt with them for a little coerced expert advice. 

♦

They were both soaked through. So much for the glamour of CI5 – there was little enough of it at the best of times, let alone when disabling a bomb underwater in the middle of a British winter. But the joy of last-minute success was warm enough. The boat reached shore, and they bundled Nesbitt into the custody of another operative. 

Doyle clambered up the slope from the water. Bodie was right behind him, leaning on him, hands firm on his shoulder and waist. Doyle was grinning, glad they could share the triumph as well as the stress. He had never been comfortable enough to touch other people, but he had been happily accepting Bodie’s hands on him for so long he couldn’t remember a time he hadn’t. But surely things had been different during those first difficult weeks together…

‘Well done,’ Cowley said once they were standing before him. 

‘Careful, sir,’ Bodie replied. ‘We’re not used to such adulation.’ 

Doyle wouldn’t stop grinning. He loved it when Bodie pushed Cowley, when he was cheekier to him than Doyle or any of the others would ever have dared. And Cowley let him get away with it, rarely even dampening those high spirits. 

‘Nerves, Bodie?’ Cowley was asking. 

‘No, the water’s damn cold.’ 

‘A wee nip of Scotch will soon put that right.’ And Cowley handed Bodie a silver hip flask. 

‘Medicinal purposes, of course.’ He took a generous swallow. 

‘Of course,’ Cowley agreed amenably. Then he was abruptly severe. ‘Why did you disobey my orders?’ 

Doyle, having waited in vain for Bodie to pass along the precious flask, explained, ‘Couldn’t hear you, sir. The engines…’

Bodie toasted this. ‘That’s right.’ 

Cowley wasn’t fooled. They hadn’t expected him to be. ‘You heard me perfectly clearly, both of you.’ 

Still waiting for his share of the Scotch, Doyle wondered how long the tirade would last. But, standing next to Bodie, and in all the flush of success, he didn’t care much. What he cared about was heating his frozen gut with some of Cowley’s best. 

‘Under the circumstances,’ Cowley was continuing, ‘I’m prepared to overlook the matter. But if everybody in CI5 disobeyed orders, where would it end?’ 

‘Downfall of society,’ Bodie replied with appropriate seriousness. He took yet another drink. 

‘Possibly,’ Cowley said, equally serious, impatient. 

‘Return to the Dark Ages, even,’ Doyle offered. 

‘Yes, even that.’ 

Doyle at last took the flask by force from a deceptively innocent-looking Bodie. _Sorry, mate, did you want a drink, too?_

‘So don’t let it happen again,’ Cowley finished. He snatched the liquor back before Doyle had had more than a sip. ‘Both of you, mind.’ And he had gone. 

Bodie and Doyle exchanged a glance, and headed after their boss before he could forget that they’d all come in the one car. 

♦

‘I’ll drop you off at Bodie’s,’ Cowley said absently, not even glancing in the rear vision mirror to where his two best operatives were huddled, shivering, in the back seat. If he had paid them any attention, he might have been amused by them sitting stoically apart, when any sensible person would have been sharing body warmth, and to hell with their boss and their masculinity. 

Doyle, having fully expected to be forced to brave the dingy and invariably cold showers at HQ, dress in whatever he could find in his locker, and write a report with only the benefit of a cup of stale tea, was pleasantly surprised at Cowley’s plans. Typical, though, that they should benefit Bodie most of all. 

‘Thank you, sir,’ Bodie said. 

Once there, standing outside on the pavement, Doyle contemplated his options. Damned if he was going to wait for a taxi. And he figured he couldn’t really impose on Bodie for a lift home when the man was just as cold and wet as Doyle. And, besides, ‘You owe me a Scotch, mate.’ 

Bodie laughed, and allowed the truth of that. 

Within thirty minutes, Doyle had had a long hot shower, rummaged through Bodie’s wardrobe for some suitable clothes, and downed a double shot of Scotch. The rumble of the washing machine attested to Bodie’s unexpected domesticity. And, while Bodie was taking his turn in the shower, Doyle wandered around his living room, exploring Bodie’s belongings. 

He had never spent much time in any of Bodie’s flats, and never had the chance – or the interest – to really pry. But right now he had the motive, the means _and_ the opportunity to investigate this man he planned on making a friend… It was too good to pass up. 

Amongst the juvenile posters on the walls of cars and anonymous too-perfect girls, there was a collection of guns – antique guns in all shapes and sizes, of wood and metal and ivory, some with intricately carved inlays. Doyle had never been interested in guns as anything other than a cruelly necessary part of the job, and missed his days as an unarmed cop even while still proud of his unbeaten record with a handgun in the Met. But this collection had more to do with beauty and craftsmanship and history, than murder and mayhem. 

Doyle moved on to the surprisingly full bookshelves – and found plays by Stoppard and Beckett and Shakespeare; non-fiction about gun collecting and the SAS; poetry by Keats and Shelley and Thoreau; and a ragtag of novels from Dostoyevsky to _Lord of the Rings._ And then there were boxes full of record albums – mostly classical, leavened by the Kinks. Doyle placed a Kinks album on the stereo, and settled to wait for his host. 

Bodie, clad in a bathrobe, wandered past and through into the laundry beyond the kitchen. From the noise, Doyle surmised Bodie was transferring their newly washed clothes to the dryer. He would have complained about Bodie having all these facilities, unusual in a London flat, except that he would never want to do his own laundry – that’s what the helpful souls in laundromats were paid for, after all. When Bodie returned to the lounge room a few minutes later, Doyle had poured them each a hefty shot of Scotch. 

‘Just feel free to help yourself, Doyle. I hereby endow you with all my worldly goods and liquor cabinet.’ 

‘Thanks.’ Doyle sat back, considering his partner. He felt welcome here in Bodie’s home, he felt comfortable. And there was Bodie, usually prudish and shy about his body, lazing around in white towelling and a lot of skin. Doyle had never seen more than the man’s face and arms in all the twenty-four months since they’d met. It was pleasant to cast an artist’s appreciative eye over this relaxed male animal, from the dark wet hair sleekly framing the skull, down to the thickly muscled calves. Bodie was, to the purely objective observer of course, beautiful. 

And Doyle, feeling a rare safety, wanted to make a start on this potential friendship. If only he knew how to go about it – he honestly still imagined that other men could do this with no effort any day of the week, despite Bodie’s denials. 

Doyle drank his third Scotch for courage. ‘Best friend I ever had was back in school,’ he started, hoping that a little confidential knowledge might set the pair of them off in the right direction. He told Bodie all about the unfortunate Sam Saunders, a boy who was not only terribly overweight but black, up in a northern town where anyone differing from skinny, white and middle class was systematically trodden down. Doyle could have been one of the accepted, despite what he thought of as his gauche, awkward ugliness, but he had blown the privilege he wasn’t sure he wanted. Doyle stuck up for Sam when the usual taunting was degenerating into a fight, and befriended him thereafter. ‘We were friends for three years, then my lot moved to London. There was a girl, too, we were friends with – JC. Josephine Catherine, that was, except she hated the name. Such a tomboy. But I often wondered whether it was _me_ Sam liked, or the fact that I kept him from a broken arm.’ 

Bodie, who had been sitting quietly attentive through this meandering story, suddenly grinned. ‘Doyle, that would have to be the most ridiculous scruple I’ve ever heard.’ He reached over for the bottle of Scotch, and poured them each another measure. ‘You wouldn’t have bothered saving him if you weren’t you. Of course he liked you.’ 

Looking across at his partner, Doyle smiled at the surprise of it. ‘Flattery will get you everywhere.’ 

‘And that tomboy, too. Trust you to take care of all the stray dogs. Did you get a medal from the RSPCA?’ 

Doyle figured that was what they referred to as _friendly fire._ So soon after the confession and the flattery, both heartfelt on Doyle’s part at least, the verbal shrapnel got him where it hurt. And, on top of the pain, was the embarrassment – yet another personal situation he had read wrong. ‘Yeah,’ he snapped at last. ‘That’s why Cowley set me to look after you.’ 

Bodie just laughed. 

‘When will my clothes be ready?’ Doyle asked after a long moment, voice tight. _I am going to take my bat and my ball, and go home…_

‘Soon.’ Bodie nodded. ‘Want a cup of tea?’ 

Wondering if he’d got anywhere with the man, or if it was even worth the effort, Doyle heaved a sour sigh. He shifted, abruptly uncomfortable in Bodie’s roomy jeans and sweater. And decided he needed to sober up. ‘Make it coffee,’ he said with a certain lack of gratitude. 

♦ ♦ ♦

When he’d first suggested a double date to Bodie, Doyle hadn’t quite had all this in mind… but he had to admit it had been fun and, at six in the morning, the fun showed no sign of flagging. 

Bodie had seemed happy enough at the suggestion, though Doyle had guessed he immediately had something crazy planned. Bodie looked thoroughly innocent, despite that devilish glint in his eye – a sure sign of trouble. And Doyle didn’t have a clue what he had planned until Bodie drove Doyle and the two girls to a dinner where Cowley was giving a speech. 

Much to Doyle’s surprise, the dinner was scrumptious, the speech was short, witty and interesting, and the girls enjoyed themselves thoroughly. And Doyle guessed Cowley was as surprised at their presence as Doyle was. Unless… perhaps Bodie had been invited. Doyle never had a chance to ask, but his curiosity was definitely aroused. 

The foursome ended up back at Doyle’s flat. At this stage of the evening, Doyle would usually be trying to entice the bird of the moment – Sandra in this case – along to his bedroom. Instead, he found himself playing Snap and then Scrabble, laughing and joking. It was all too unexpected. Going by the tales Bodie told after his dates, Doyle had thought his first and only priority would have been racing Mary off bedroom-bound as well, but the companionship seemed more than enough for Bodie tonight. 

Right now, Bodie was waltzing Mary around the room. He picked up the framed photo of Cowley he’d given Doyle for Christmas – Doyle was still wondering over that one – and said, ‘Nice speech the old man made.’ 

‘A filibuster,’ Doyle lied, playing along. Sandra was sitting on his lap, flogging him at backgammon. Bodie had carefully tossed the photo aside, and fallen with Mary on to the sofa opposite, and they were cuddling up together with little thought to the fact they were in company. Life was good. 

Then the phone rang. After a delay, Doyle answered it – he couldn’t ever not answer the phone – and Bodie saw it was business and eventually ushered the girls out into the kitchen. 

Trouble. Calling at his old flat from his days in the Met, in the shape of a tall beautiful lady in a mink coat and a husky voice. 

Doyle tried to explain the reason for his inconveniently urgent interest, but made the mistake of beginning, ‘Look, when I was in the Drug Squad –’ 

Bodie fell asleep. 

‘ _Listen_ –’ Only the contacts he cared about knew where he’d lived. And they would only call on him if it was life or death. 

‘OK,’ Bodie said, knowing Doyle could as little leave this mystery be as he could ignore the phone ringing. 

‘OK what?’ 

‘Let’s go and check it out.’ 

‘What about the girls?’ Doyle asked after a moment. 

Bodie sighed. ‘Leave it to me.’ 

They were halfway to the old flat before Doyle thought to ask what Bodie had told the girls. Doyle did, after all, want to see Sandra again – which was why he’d let Bodie do the talking. Bodie had the silveriest tongue and the smoothest lines Doyle had ever come across. Besides which, in his tousled evening suit and morning stubble, he looked gorgeous. Sandra couldn’t fail to be moved by whatever urgent tale he spun. 

‘I told them,’ said Bodie, relaxing back in the passenger seat, ‘that we had turned gay and are running off to get married.’ He looked thoughtful. ‘Of course they knew it wasn’t true. I wouldn’t marry you if you were the last man on Earth.’ 

Doyle cast a long glance at his partner, then turned away to negotiate the early morning traffic. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘I’m much too good for you.’ 

♦

The beautiful lady with the husky voice had been killed, was lying naked _sans_ mink coat in the Thames by the time Bodie and Doyle arrived. She had been a high class hooker named Ann Seaford, who had occasionally helped Doyle during his days on the Drug Squad. Ancient history, maybe, but her death angered Doyle. Sickened him. Ann had been decent, honest, brave. There was too little of that these days, particularly in the after-dark world in which she moved. She hadn’t deserved to end up like this. 

Bodie was teasing Doyle now. They were in the car, heading for Ann’s place, Doyle explaining about pimps and such. Bodie was laughing. He said, ‘What a full and formative life you had, eh? Pimps and high class hookers.’ 

Doyle laughed, too, for once able to score one over Bodie. ‘See,’ he said with great satisfaction, ‘I was enjoying myself while you were in the army.’ 

But the joke palled after a moment of reflection, because Doyle realised how little he knew about this man, his partner – how little about Bodie’s army days, let alone the mystery of his childhood, and his time in the African jungles. Doyle suspected everything he himself did and thought and felt was on display – while Bodie’s life history was a closed book. Closed and padlocked. 

♦

Some of Bodie’s thoughts and attitudes were annoyingly evident, however. Although they both agreed that pimps were the lowest form of life, they disagreed over where hookers were ranked in the scale of things. 

‘She was a very nice girl,’ Doyle was defending Ann Seaford again, this time in Cowley’s office. Bodie was openly sceptical. Doyle continued, angry and frustrated, ‘Hookers are women, too, you know. They come in _nice_.’ In fact, they came in every variety known to humanity, including _intelligent_ and _challenging_. 

Bodie, however, seemed to think hookers only came in _slut_. ‘Have a heart of gold, did she?’ he asked sceptically. 

‘No, but she did have a sort of code.’ That was important to Doyle – that you had a decent code and you stuck to it. He wondered if Bodie had one, and what it was. _Live fast, die young, leave a pretty corpse?_ No. His Special Services Squad motto: _Till death do us join?_ Not Bodie. One day, Doyle swore, he’d work the man out. Or die trying. 

Die of terminal confusion, maybe. Doyle came to a halt outside the CI5 rest room, only minutes after he was all set to strangle Bodie but for Cowley’s presence. It was nothing he hadn’t overheard before: ‘That Doyle’s a strange one.’ – ‘What _is_ it with him?’ – ‘Reckon he’s queer or something?’ – ‘A bloody social misfit, at least.’ 

The individual voices and identities weren’t important; they were only expressing the same inanities other people had when confronted with the enigma that was Ray Doyle. He didn’t fit in, wasn’t one of the crowd, so he was automatically queer or crazy or even sociopathic. It had been years since this sort of mindless speculation had actually hurt him. 

But then one voice did matter. ‘Cut the crap. Doyle’s all right.’ Bodie. 

‘You’re kidding,’ was the general response. ‘How do you put up with him?’ 

‘Best partner I ever had.’ 

Laughter. _‘Only_ partner you’ve ever had.’ And then – ‘God, it’s catching, isn’t it? He’s turned you queer, too.’ 

_Yeah, and we’re running off to get married._ Doyle waited through the moment’s silence, expecting angry denials, the thud of a fist on flesh, Bodie’s cold potent fury. 

But Bodie chuckled happily. ‘Dream on, mate.’ He appeared at the open door, caught sight of Doyle, and paused. Then Bodie smiled. He said, clearly so that the people inside would hear, ‘Come on, Ray. _Some_ of us have work to do.’ 

And they walked down the corridor, shoulder to shoulder. _None of this matters_ , Doyle tried to tell himself. But, despite himself, he felt on top of the world. 

♦ ♦ ♦

It didn’t make much sense – some Irish terrorists had knocked over an army base, had stolen a truckload of rifles and grenades and what have you – and someone else had ambushed the Irish, executed them, and taken the arms. One of the grenades, however, promptly surfaced at Dartingford Hospital, being used by a young man to hold a nurse hostage. 

When Bodie and Doyle got to the hospital, Bodie assessed the situation via binoculars. ‘Yeah, could be our man. He’s holding a Webley 44. Along with… a 38B cup.’ He smirked happily. 

The local police Inspector and Doyle gazed back at him. ‘What?’ Doyle asked. 

‘Here, have a look at that.’ Bodie handed over the binoculars. Sure enough, the man had a gun in one hand, resting on the nurse’s head, and a grenade in the other hand, down her blouse. Bodie continued, ‘There’s wandering hands with a vengeance for you.’ He sounded almost approving, definitely amused. 

‘Oh nice,’ Doyle said, meaning _particularly nasty_. 

They asked the Inspector if anyone knew who the young man was. ‘William Turner,’ was the reply. ‘He was a patient here two years ago.’ 

‘What did they do?’ Bodie asked. ‘Take out the wrong appendix?’ 

By this time, the Inspector was looking quite dumbfounded by Bodie’s facetiousness. Doyle almost laughed – for once he felt more like Bodie’s partner than an ex-cop trying to do his best in CI5. For once he felt he truly belonged somewhere. And God only knew why, when Bodie was at his most obnoxious. _Just think_ – _I enjoy coming in to work each day, solely because of Bodie’s lousy sense of humour_. 

Once they had a plan – Bodie’s crazy, highly unorthodox plan – Doyle watched him absent-mindedly charm the Inspector. _As_ Bodie explained what he needed from the cops, he had his arm around the Inspector’s shoulders, talking to him like he was a vital part of all this, never mind that the fast boys from Cowley’s Incorrigibles were in charge, never mind that the Inspector couldn’t even keep up with the black jokes let alone anything else. 

Doyle was still wary of taking such immediate action. And Bodie was putting himself in a lot of danger, pretending to be Billy Turner’s old psychiatrist in order to walk as close to Turner and the nurse as he could. ‘The right technique is to keep him talking,’ Doyle observed. 

‘Suppose his left hand tires first?’ Bodie asked, impatient. ‘It takes about four pounds of pressure to keep a hand grenade lever clamped down. Not much, just four pounds. But after an hour it feels like eight. And then twelve. And then cramp sets in. And then suddenly it’s raining… Nurse Emma Bolding.’ 

Doyle felt chilled to the gut. It sounded frighteningly like Bodie was speaking from dreadful experience. Had it been in Africa? Someone had maybe forced him to – Before his imagination could run away with him, Doyle just agreed. ‘All right.’ 

Getting ready, putting on a doctor’s white coat and the psychiatrist’s glasses, Bodie said, ‘If that grenade’s one of ours, it’s an X4A – ten seconds fuse. If it’s primed right.’ 

Doyle chorused that last with his partner – ‘primed right’ – seeing all too well the factors which made this a dangerous stunt to pull. He didn’t want to think of the odds of succeeding. Doyle added, ‘Yeah – _if.’_

Bodie gave a lovely little ironic laugh. ‘Samuel Beckett would like that. Life in a word: if.’ 

Staring at him, Doyle wondered all over again at this man. Maybe this qualified as some new definition of courage – literary references under pressure. And Bodie let everyone else think he was less than semi-literate. In fact, he remembered Bodie once convincing someone he was dyslexic, and therefore was not only deserving of a great deal of sympathy, but needed help with writing this report for Cowley… 

Kneeling behind the cover of a car, Doyle lined his rifle up on Billy Turner – once Billy had realised that it was Bodie stalking him, not the psychiatrist, Doyle had to shoot Turner before he could shoot a very exposed Bodie. 

‘Can you take him?’ Bodie asked, crouching beside him. 

‘Bodie!’ Doyle cried, exasperated. Neither of them could afford to doubt the other’s abilities. Not in a situation like this. 

‘Can you bloody take him?’ 

‘Yeah, I can bloody take him.’ 

‘I _know_ you can,’ Bodie said, smoothly amused again. ‘It just gives a man confidence to have it confirmed.’ 

And they were on – within seconds, Bodie had walked closer, Billy had aimed the Webley at him, and Doyle had shot Billy in the shoulder. Bodie took off at a run to where Nurse Emma Bolding was screaming, panicking, trying in vain to fish the loose grenade from her blouse. Bodie tore the material open, grabbed the grenade and threw it into a metal garbage skip, then lay on the woman to protect her from shrapnel. The grenade exploded harmlessly, and it was all over. 

Doyle ran up to take charge of the injured Billy. Meanwhile, Bodie was gently sitting the lovely young nurse up, dusting off her face and even her chest, then carefully tying the remains of her blouse together to conceal her bra. _It’s all part of the service, ma’am…_

‘It’s your lucky day, Nurse Bolding,’ Doyle said. She looked across at him in stunned disbelief. ‘He doesn’t often do that.’ 

Bodie smirked _as_ Emma Bolding gazed up at him, as she smiled, hesitant at first. 

Doyle almost laughed. The story she would be telling all her friends that night – instead of starting with, _This madman took me hostage…_ would be, _This gorgeous knight in shining armour rescued me…_ Tall, dark, handsome, and boldly risking his life. Doyle reflected that he might have fallen for Bodie himself under those circumstances. 

♦

Billy Turner was seated on a cot in an Interrogation Room in the dark basements of CI5. Two men – the ones who’d shot him, who’d ruined his glorious revenge on the psychiatrist – sat casually at a table, mugs of coffee in hand, ignoring Billy asif he was of no great consequence. 

Billy the half-wit, Billy the innocent, who already knew these men were tough and brave and ruthless, that they were beyond ordinary cops and beyond the law, was discovering that they were vastly experienced in other ways of the world as well. They were talking about that mysterious matter called sex as if it was commonplace. 

Then their boss arrived, and they all made it plain there weren’t any rules about interrogating a CI5 prisoner. Things were abruptly going to get physical. 

Billy the scrawny looked up at the two men, each a head taller than him, one more solid than him and the other bigger still. ‘I want a lawyer,’ Billy Turner said in last-ditch defiance. 

‘Why, son?’ the larger one asked, almost gently. ‘Do you want to make a will?’ 

After all that, Bodie and Doyle didn’t have to use actual physical violence. Back in Cowley’s office, Bodie explained that they’d, ‘Just had to stimulate his imagination a bit.’ 

Doyle drank the Scotch Cowley offered them, mulling over the little that Billy could tell them. And in the back of his mind, he couldn’t help but reflect that Bodie had only spun the yarn about the doctor he’d lived with in East Africa for the sake of Billy’s imagination. Doyle was bloody irritated now that he thought about it. Would Bodie ever cut the masculine secretive routine, and share something of himself or his history just for the sake of it? _Isn’t that what friends are meant to do?_ Maybe Bodie didn’t realise they were friends yet. 

Cowley’s leg was obviously giving him hell. Doyle took him some more Scotch, as their boss explained there was no guarantee that he’d keep the leg at all if he had it operated on to take the embedded bullet out. Some choice – a painful leg, or no leg. Cowley asked Bodie, ‘What would you do, eh?’ 

‘Me, sir?’ Bodie said. ‘I’d have another drink, sir.’ 

Cowley smiled at this, amused at the words, and obviously fond of the man who said them. Doyle, standing there beside them both, felt jealous for a moment, excluded by that easy understanding between Cowley and his favourite operative. 

Then Cowley asked them what they’d learned from Billy Turner. It appeared that a ‘top cop’ was mixed up with Billy’s employers, the Turkel brothers, notorious criminals. Bodie and Doyle made the mistake of suggesting the Chief Commissioner might be in the Turkels’ pay. Cowley exploded and told them to get out. 

Bodie deliberately turned back at the door. ‘You’ll check him out all the same.’ He added, ‘Sir.’ 

Silence for a moment. Bodie turned away again. He had that look on his face – Doyle wouldn’t have dared call it sulky. Resentful? Insolent? 

Cowley softened. ‘Bodie. You did well today. Even if you did break all the rules.’ 

‘Rules, sir?’ Bodie said, blankly, as if he didn’t know the word. 

Doyle could hear Cowley laughing a little. It seemed Bodie was a better pain-killer than even the Scotch. 

♦

Bent cops were one of Bodie’s pet topics. He could make snide remarks about them all day without even trying. 

He and Doyle were at the Turkels’ abandoned house, which was currently being searched by the police. The local Sergeant was filling them in on progress. ‘But there won’t be anything incriminating,’ was the Sergeant’s considered opinion. ‘Charley Turkel’s a wily bird.’ 

‘Know him well, do you?’ Bodie asked. 

‘It helps to stay friendly,’ the Sergeant replied. Doyle knew how it was – the give and take, and you let small misdemeanours slide if there was a chance to get the big fish. 

‘Helps what? Your bank balance?’ 

‘Now, hold on–’ 

Doyle broke in. ‘Helps with criminal information.’ He looked across at his partner. ‘That’s what you meant to say, isn’t it?’ 

Bodie smirked and shook his head. _Not even close._ He was enjoying himself, all right. 

The Sergeant walked over to him, seriously riled. ‘You CI5 boys think you’re the cat’s whiskers, don’t you?’ 

‘At least we’re at the right end of the cat.’ 

Doyle stepped up, feeling like he was on a losing wicket. ‘Oh come on, we’re all on the same side, _remember?_ Go on, Sergeant.’ 

Unfortunately, the man started, ‘Well, it’s only a small thing–’ 

‘That’s the rumour,’ Bodie chipped in. 

‘Ignore him,’ Doyle said, severe. That last sortie was so typically Bodie – childish and obnoxious. Funny and adorable. It was only as Doyle pondered for the thousandth time _why_ he liked the man, that he realised how very _much_ he liked him. It was a disquieting thought, to say the least. 

♦

Doyle had to wake Bodie up the next morning. There was a girl there, a blonde – and because she wasn’t Nurse Emma Bolding, Doyle assumed she was the current girlfriend, Claire. He ignored her as best he could. 

‘Bodie! Come on, handsome.’ 

Bodie was lying face down in bed; tousled hair, naked amidst the rumpled sheets. Doyle couldn’t decide whether he looked childlike, all dazed and sleepy and vulnerable under the furry bedspread – or dangerous, with those powerfully built shoulders, the latent strength of him. Perhaps both, if that were possible. 

‘Good morning,’ Doyle said loudly. He picked up the nearest discarded shirt and threw it at the man. 

Then Doyle saw the scar that ran down Bodie’s left shoulder-blade. He must have got that before Cowley had given him a partner to watch his back for him. Doyle found himself suddenly sentimentally, defiantly protective – _Won’t let anyone get to you ever again. Looks like there’s been too much hurt already._

It was confusing, all the emotion that washed through him, inundating him. Doyle turned to the girl standing at the foot of the bed in one of Bodie’s shirts. He looked her up and down, even more objectionably than he’d seen Bodie do it. ‘You must be Betty,’ Doyle said. ‘He told me a lot about you.’ 

Claire looked furious. 

Bodie looked disgusted. ‘You…’ There were apparently no words bad enough to describe Doyle at this point. After all, this was the kind of innuendo that, Bodie being Bodie, was too easily believed. 

Doyle didn’t want to think about why he’d done that. Later, in the car, he pleaded good intentions – any relationship can be spiced up with a little jealousy. 

‘I was getting enough spice without that.’ Bodie glared at him. ‘I _was_.’ Past tense. 

Doyle being Doyle, he worried over the impulse to scare Claire away. He was becoming a tad territorial when it came to his partner – jealous of Bodie’s unique relationship with Cowley, jealous of Bodie’s birds. None of this made any sense – unless Doyle was quite simply certifiable, which he began to suspect was the truth of it. 

♦

When it was all over, and the Turkels’ gang were all in custody, Doyle felt at a bit of a loss. The cops and other CI5 operatives drove off with the prisoners, Cowley drove off in his Rover – leaving Bodie and Doyle standing on the pavement with no transport. 

Doyle cast a long glance over his partner. Bodie looked smart in the pale grey suit and blue tie that he’d bought somewhere close by in order to pose as the Home Secretary’s bodyguard. Maybe the word _dapper_ had been invented with Bodie in mind. And the word _beautiful_. Doyle turned away, suddenly uncomfortable, and unwilling to ask himself why. 

‘I’m surprised he didn’t tell you to take that suit back.’ 

Bodie jogged a couple of steps to catch up with him. ‘He did. That’s where we’re going.’ 

Doyle wondered why he suddenly felt at peace. ‘Dedicated follower of fashion,’ he observed, casting a last glance over the suit. 

‘The Kinks.’ Bodie recognised the quote. 

‘Wrote that for you, didn’t they?’ 

Bodie pondered this for a moment. ‘If you’re saying I _flit_ around like a _butterfly_ , Doyle…’ 

‘More than my life’s worth, really, isn’t it?’ Doyle reflected. 

‘You’re right.’ 

They meandered back to the men’s shop, where Bodie had left his old clothes. And then they wandered on to a pub. Doyle didn’t bother trying for any deep and meaningful conversations this time, didn’t tell any more of his sorry life history. The companionship was more than enough. 

And the best of it was that Doyle had Bodie all to himself. 

♦ ♦ ♦

Life was good. Life was better than good. Maybe this was friendship. Whatever it was, Doyle was content. 

He and Bodie were speeding along, tracking down Greek terrorists. ‘Don’t knock it,’ Doyle was saying. _‘Ghetto_ means being able to depend on your own kind.’ 

Bodie said speculatively, ‘So you and me are a mobile ghetto, eh?’ 

Doyle smiled. This must have been what he wanted all along. And Bodie seemed happy enough with it all, too. Life was wonderful. 

♦ ♦ ♦

Neither of them had known Tommy McKay; Bodie and Doyle had considered Tommy a dangerous psychopath and had not wanted him mixed up in any of their ops, or watching their backs for them. But Tommy gave his life to save theirs, was cut down in a hail of bullets. It was a sobering situation to be in – the combination of guilt, gratitude and grief twisted Doyle’s stomach, and the subsequent arrest of Latymer, a big fish if ever there was one, didn’t help for long. 

To Doyle’s amazement, Bodie seemed almost as hard hit by Tommy’s sacrifice as Doyle was. _Maybe that’s part of Bodie’s attraction,_ Doyle thought; _that he constantly surprises you._

Doyle said, ‘Come on home. I’ve got some beer in. And I’ll teach you Canasta.’ 

‘Is that a threat, Doyle?’ 

‘Yeah. Canasta brings out the worst in people, you know.’ 

Driving out of the carpark, Doyle almost turned right instead of left. Wondering why, he realised that normally he would be heading to his mother’s right now. But today, for once, he had Bodie to help him unwind. He’d soon see if that was better or worse. 

Two hours and six beers later, Doyle was reflecting that this hadn’t been such a good idea after all. Bodie had learnt the complicated card game far too quickly. 

‘I’m coming out now,’ Bodie announced cheerfully, if slowly. The six beers he’d drunk had left him in a mellow mood, but Doyle half suspected that the deliberate carefulness of all his moves, the painstaking enunciation of his every word, were put on – but that was all right. It all helped the cheerful, friendly atmosphere. 

‘I bet you say that to all the guys,’ Doyle quipped. 

Bodie happily agreed to this. It seemed he’d agree to anything right now. Then, oh-so-carefully, he began laying down cards – two aces melded with two jokers, three queens, and then a red canasta of eights. He discarded a five. ‘And I’m going out, too.’ He looked up at a dumbfounded Doyle. ‘I get an extra hundred points, don’t I? For doing all that in one hand?’ 

Doyle met his gaze suspiciously. ‘You’ve played this before.’ 

‘Swear to God.’ Bodie shook his head, then laughed. ‘Swear to Cowley, I never have.’ 

‘Sure…’ Doyle looked down again at Bodie’s hand of cards, not sure he wanted to go to the trouble of adding up the points. It was a bloody good hand, all right. Bodie’s wildly instinctive and unpredictable style of play was in complete contrast to Doyle’s own carefully complicated, planned style. In fact, this hand of cards he held now that he’d been nurturing into… This hand… ‘You bastard!’ Doyle cried out. 

‘What?’ Bodie asked innocently. 

‘I haven’t come out yet! All these cards count as negative points!’ Doyle was furious, with all the immediacy and depth that only a combination of alcohol and Canasta can create in a person. He had four red threes on the table – just _that_ was eight hundred points – and then hundreds of points in his hand, full of wild cards and kings and a few aces. It was a deadly score. ‘I’ll kill you!’ 

Bodie just laughed. Gleefully. ‘You’re a good teacher, Doyle.’ 

‘Fuck that. It’s your deal. Get on with it – because I am going to get mad _and_ even.’ 

‘Sure you are,’ Bodie murmured consolingly. He ducked a wild punch from across the table, grinning. ‘Hey, it’s only a game, Doyle.’ 

‘No, it isn’t – it’s Canasta. This is _WAR!’_

Bodie laughed again, shuffled and dealt them another hand, while Doyle went to fetch more beer. When he was back in hearing distance, Bodie said, ‘Just as well this isn’t Strip Canasta, Doyle, or that last hand would have lost you more than your socks.’ 

Doyle sniffed, disapproving. But he quoted Bodie, recalling the day Bodie had stoutly defended his honour. ‘Dream on, mate.’ They shared a smile before returning to business. 

This time, Doyle went after the pots of discarded cards with a vengeance, and assembled a lovely hand. At last he announced, ‘I’m going out now.’ And lay down a canasta of wild cards as his crowning glory. 

It was Bodie’s turn to look dumbfounded. ‘You can’t do that!’ he exclaimed. ‘You can only make canastas out of ordinary cards!’ 

‘Who says? That’s how my granny used to play.’ 

‘Bless her, I’m sure. Cheating runs in your family, does it?’ 

Doyle looked as lofty and noble as possible under the circumstances. 

Bodie just burst out laughing. ‘You’re making this up as you go along, aren’t you?’ He obviously thought this was the funniest part of the whole evening. ‘I’d never have thought it of you, mate. Talk about taking advantage!’ 

They were into the next bitter and deadly game, Bodie having won by a mere ninety-five points on the last one, when Doyle said, ‘If men can’t be friends because they’re so competitive, how come we’re enjoying this?’ 

‘Ah. This is a classic case of male bonding, Doyle.’ Bodie gleefully picked up the pot due to Doyle’s thoughtless discard. 

‘But by your definition, then, this means damn all!’ 

Bodie grinned at him across the table, still arranging all the valuable cards he’d just collected. ‘Fun, though, isn’t it?’ he observed. 

‘Hell with that!’ There was the familiar surge of fresh adrenalin through Doyle, hard on the heels of all the stress of the Canasta war. And there was a huge roiling mess of emotion, too, such as he had only felt occasionally – lately in particular relation to Bodie. ‘This has to mean something,’ Doyle cried out. 

Bodie looked up. He seemed surprised by the turmoil Doyle knew must be evident in his voice, in his face. Surprised, taken aback – and then quickly uncaring. 

‘This has to mean something,’ Doyle repeated, insisted. ‘You can’t dismiss it like that.’ He felt anger, primarily, and frustration. Determination that all this fine feeling he’d had for Bodie, that he thought Bodie had shared, wasn’t made a mockery of. And a suspicion that he looked incredibly foolish. 

‘Dismiss what?’ But Bodie was patently uninterested. 

Doyle tried to check the fury, this enormous fury that was surely too large to belong solely to him, but it boiled over. Bodie watched Doyle get up, stride around the table – that he didn’t offer any defence infuriated Doyle further. He swung a fist, connecting hard with Bodie’s jaw. 

Bodie rolled with it, then straightened from the chair and grabbed at Doyle’s wrists to prevent another swing. Over-balanced, they both fell to the floor in a tangle of limbs, Doyle struggling and Bodie trying to contain him. 

All Doyle knew was that he had to have some impact on this man, make some kind of dent in his feelings. He was reduced to fighting dirty – Bodie had managed to pin Doyle’s legs down, even though they lay side by side, with the simple expedient of a thigh across both of Doyle’s, and the weight of Bodie’s lower body twisted across his groin – and Bodie still held Doyle’s arms, though that restricted Bodie’s range of movement as well. Doyle’s left arm was trapped under Bodie’s torso, and his right was tucked in behind his own back. All he could move was his head. If he surprised Bodie, who only had a tentative stability, Doyle might be able to regain control. 

Doyle remembered a move from his gutter-fighting days. And fastened his teeth on Bodie’s earlobe. 

Bodie growled a warning, but he didn’t budge. 

There was a long still moment, during which all the fight drained out of Doyle, leaving him confused and ashamed. He became aware of several things at once – including a feeling of utter foolishness at fighting this man he only wanted to be friends with, and also an intense excitement at this maddened wrestling match. And Doyle wanted to express all the friendship he’d been feeling over the past weeks, that he thought had been obvious to his partner. Maybe the words, the companionship simply hadn’t been enough. 

He let go of Bodie’s ear, and gave it an apologetic lick. Bodie growled again – and Doyle knew that was another thing he’d become sublimely aware of – Bodie was beautiful. Sensual. Powerfully male. And, with an immediacy he could not ignore, Doyle wanted all of that. Before Bodie could move away, Doyle nudged the polo neck of Bodie’s sweater aside and fastened his mouth to Bodie’s jugular vein, biting and licking at the sensitive skin, in desperate need of some positive reaction from his partner. 

Bodie relaxed a little, leant in closer, encouraging Doyle. Then, at last, he fell further forward onto the smaller man, letting Doyle’s weight trap his own arm behind his back, leaving Bodie’s arms free. One hand clutched at Doyle’s hip. And Doyle felt the faintest increase in pressure from Bodie’s groin, as if Bodie was wary of his possible reaction or intentions; Doyle felt obvious evidence of the man’s excitement. It only heightened his own. 

But Doyle was already uncomfortable under Bodie’s not inconsiderable weight. He bit hard at Bodie’s neck, then let go and started struggling anew to free himself. His struggles brought home to Doyle how aroused he was, and what was causing it. Unlike his usual sexual yearnings, this wasn’t centred in his groin and genitals. Instead, Doyle felt a fierce longing suffused throughout him, emotionally as well as physically. It was like being thoroughly drunk with need. And while that need encompassed all of him, it was focussed wholly on just one being. Bodie. ‘Let me –’ Doyle found the breath to demand. 

Bodie freed Doyle’s arms, gathered him close and rolled them over so that Doyle lay on top of Bodie, between his legs. Doyle lifted himself up onto his hands, searched Bodie’s face – but Bodie was as lost to sensation as Doyle was. Bodie was ready for him. If there had been time, Doyle might have dealt somehow with their clothes – as it was, after an abortive fumble, he quickly thought better of it. Instead, he began an urgent driving rhythm, rocking their groins together; Bodie’s hands on his buttocks guiding him, encouraging him, showing him how; Bodie’s hips below him, pushing strongly to meet his hunger. 

Completion of this crazy joining was only moments away. Doyle gave a hoarse shout. If he’d had his wits about him, he would have been scared at the tidal wave of pleasure that overtook him. And scared at the vague glance he had of Bodie’s expression – he might have thought disparagingly that Bodie the atheist looked like he’d died, gone to heaven, and found himself face to face with an angel. 

Doyle simply closed his eyes and rode the sensations, and Bodie’s trembling bucking reactions, to their sweet end. Then he lay down on his partner and fell into an exhausted dream-haunted sleep. 

♦

It was a rude awakening, perhaps fifteen minutes later – Doyle was cold and sore and he’d drunk too much and he was confused and full of self-pity. He thought Bodie must have shaken him roughly to wake him, so rolled resignedly off his partner, and lay still on his back on the floor. How could he ever have put himself in a situation where sex with Bodie seemed like a good idea? The whole thing was like a barely remembered surreal nightmare – except there was ample proof that it had been real. He avoided meeting Bodie’s searching gaze, as Bodie staggered up to his feet and swayed there for a moment. Then Bodie took a couple of steps away, out of Doyle’s range of vision. 

‘Ray?’ Bodie said, tentative. Raw. 

Doyle couldn’t, wouldn’t answer him. There were too many things he could have said, and none of them would have been true. None of them would have even been fair. After a long silence, he heard Bodie sigh, and then Bodie walked out of the flat, closing the front door quietly behind him. And Doyle was alone yet again. Naturally. 

♦ ♦ ♦

Doyle dearly wanted to close down all the emotions that Bodie had let loose within him, but it was a lost cause. Bodie’s mercenary mates from his Africa days had shown up, dredging up old memories, old loyalties. Doyle took bitter satisfaction in that most of the memories were bad – and then hated himself for Bodie’s pain. 

Krivas was the one who meant the most. Even in the grainy black-and-white photo that Cowley showed them, Krivas had piercing eyes, dark foreign good looks, a certain charisma. And it was obvious from the depth of Bodie’s hate that there must have been a close friendship and then betrayal between them in the past. 

‘There was this girl –’ Bodie had said in Cowley’s office, trying to explain the bad blood between them, before Cowley had cut him off, uninterested in the sordid details. 

Outside, in the corridor, Doyle decided to yet again forget his policy of non-interference, and fish for the story. ‘So there was this girl…’ 

‘Yeah.’ 

‘Yeah.’ Doyle matched the careless tone. ‘Always is,’ he added. 

‘Yeah, well, this girl was special, see,’ Bodie continued, deliberately dispassionate. ‘Beautiful. I loved her. _Really_ loved her. Krivas had this crazy notion she was his bird. He killed her.’ Bodie paused on the stairs, remembering. ‘44 Magnum at close range.’ He added, with a touch of regret at last, ‘She was beautiful.’ 

Doyle caught up with him, surreptitiously searched his partner’s face. ‘Personal involvement,’ Doyle observed. ‘Spoil your aim.’ Which he knew well enough was typical Doyle – afraid that his emotions would hamper him, get in his way, interfere with his skills. If it had been him and Krivas, he’d be so busy seeing red he could too easily do the wrong thing. Revenge or even sheer anger too often set his violence free. 

Bodie was more cold-blooded. ‘It gives you an edge. A cutting edge.’ His hate for Krivas would give him all the more reason, all the more stimulation to aim straight. 

Adrenalin was a two-edged sword when combined with emotions or uncertainties – either sharpening or dulling your strength, reactions, thoughts – depending on who wielded the sword. But if Cowley had trained them, they could use anything to make them sharper, despite their different approaches. 

Doyle figured he and Bodie were opposites in other things as well – everything Doyle felt always showed on his face – whereas the more Bodie felt, the more inexpressive he got. Unless that tight pale mask he was wearing now signified pain. 

If so, it was more emotion than Doyle had caused in him. Ever since that night after Tommy McKay had been killed, their relationship… had remained the same as ever. No more and no less. It was as if the sex had never happened. Doyle didn’t know _what_ he wanted from Bodie, but it hadn’t been the sex, and it wasn’t what he was getting now. He was beginning to suspect that the casual easy-going affection that subsisted between them simply hid Bodie’s indifference. In which case, Doyle was simply asking for trouble, trying to get close to his partner. 

Doyle couldn’t stop himself puzzling over whether Bodie had had sex with other men before. Surely, if it had been Bodie’s first time, it would have meant more to him. And there was his skill, the way he’d known just where Doyle should be, how they should move. And Doyle remembered how quickly Bodie had turned on – sex with another man couldn’t have been strange to him. 

Maybe it had been Krivas. 

‘You must have been friends once,’ Doyle pushed later that night, sitting in wait for one of Krivas’s gang, another of Bodie’s old buddies. 

‘Friends! He left me to rot in a Congo jail.’ 

There had obviously been a lot between them. It was too obvious. Maybe that scar on Bodie’s back – that could only have been caused by someone Bodie once trusted. Doyle couldn’t quite imagine his partner ever having been green enough to let anyone else within his guard. 

‘Maybe…’ Doyle suggested, not knowing whether he appeared red with embarrassment or white with nerves. ‘Maybe you and Krivas were _more_ than friends?’ 

Bodie turned to look up at him, sardonic. ‘Sure – when I told you we were fighting over a _girl_ , Doyle.’ 

Still, Bodie had known immediately what Doyle was asking. Perhaps it was all right to be direct. ‘Well, have you ever? Been with another man, I mean.’ 

Bodie was staring at him as if he were crazy. 

‘Other than me,’ Doyle added for the sake of clarification. 

‘Do me a favour and shut up, Doyle,’ was the impatient reply. And they continued their wait in uneasy silence. 

♦

They caught up with Krivas at last, out in some desolate wasteland, though he’d led CI5 on as merry a chase as they’d had for a long while. It had only been Bodie’s knowledge of Krivas’s methods and thought processes that kept them close behind him. But soon, between Bodie and Doyle and Cowley, Krivas’s gang had all been accounted for. So when Doyle heard Bodie’s voice from over the next rise in the wilderness they were floundering around in, he guessed who Bodie was speaking to. 

‘You know what to do,’ Bodie was telling Krivas. 

‘Bodie!’ Doyle yelled, climbing up into sight of the pair. Krivas was standing, hands up, opposite a fierce Bodie. Both Bodie’s hands were wrapped firmly around his handgun, and he held it at arm’s length, aimed directly at Krivas’s chest. Despite Bodie being too close for his own safety, just begging for a fight, Krivas was very still – they all knew it would take very little for Bodie to squeeze the trigger. He probably had too much pressure on it already. 

‘Keep out of this!’ Bodie told Doyle. He continued to his old foe, ‘I may not be as good a shot as you, Krivas. I might miss a couple of times. You know, hit a knee cap. Or a gut shot.’ The gun tracked down to the area in question. ‘Or lower,’ Bodie threatened. 

Doyle was disgusted by the whole situation Bodie had put himself in. ‘Bodie, you’re no better than he is.’ This was what Doyle feared most – the anarchy of unrestrained violence. There had to be national laws, people to enforce them, personal codes – or there would be barbarism. The fact that Bodie hadn’t simply arrested Krivas by now, sunk him to Krivas’s level. And this was the man Doyle wanted for a friend? 

‘I don’t think that’s true, do you?’ Bodie asked rhetorically. ‘Only one way to find out.’ He threw his gun at Doyle so fast that Doyle had trouble catching it. ‘I’m not breaking the law; just bending it.’ 

And the fight was on. Doyle left them to it, annoyed. Let the boys sort it out with their petty violence if that’s what it would take. Let Bodie take everything he must know Doyle held dear, and batter it with his fists. 

‘Where’s Bodie?’ Cowley asked when Doyle reached him. 

‘Re-living old times,’ Doyle replied. Bodie had supposedly left the jungle behind a long time ago. Pity a piece of it had come back to reclaim him. 

At last Bodie joined them, staggering up over a rise in the ground. He was a mess – blood everywhere, clothes torn. It had been one of his best suits, too. ‘You should see the other fellow!’ Bodie said cheerfully. 

_Typical Bodie,_ Doyle thought, sad at heart. 

♦

‘It’s not very fair of me,’ Doyle said, ‘is it? To keep telling you all these ghastly things.’ 

Eileen Doyle smiled a little. ‘It’s all right. If it helps you.’ 

‘It helps.’ 

‘You’re only thirty. You shouldn’t have to deal with this sort of thing at that age.’ 

‘You’re as young as you feel,’ Doyle said with a humourless chuckle. ‘After two years in CI5, I feel a hundred.’ 

‘You’re just a baby.’ 

‘Oh thanks!’ Then Doyle sighed. He’d made a conscious decision that he couldn’t like Bodie anymore, but he was finding it a difficult resolution to keep. ‘I’m meant to be meeting Bodie to see a movie later tonight.’ When his mother laughed at his tone of voice, he tried to explain. ‘I just never know what to expect from him.’ 

‘You’ve never had many friends, have you?’ 

‘He’s not a friend,’ Doyle asserted. ‘I don’t know what he is.’ 

Doyle was silent for a long time, mind jumping from topic to not quite irrelevant topic. He finally steeled himself to say, ‘Sometimes I think I take after Dad too much.’ 

But Eileen said quietly, ‘You’re not like your father. Not at all. He had no conscience.’ 

‘Well, maybe it’s Bodie that takes after him,’ Doyle muttered half in frustration and half echoing Bodie’s humour. 

♦

Bodie stood behind Doyle in the queue at the cinema, peering over his shoulder. ‘Five minutes till curtain up,’ Bodie was saying. ‘Just enough time to buy the popcorn.’ 

Doyle was bemused at first – he hardly knew what to say, how to behave. Bodie seemed oblivious of the fact he was standing so close to Doyle that his breath was warm against Doyle’s neck as he spoke. Then, as the people in front of them moved forward, Bodie pushed him along with his hands on Doyle’s hips. 

It didn’t seem possible that Bodie should still touch him so easily. The man seemed supremely unconscious of the fact that they’d had sex together only ten days ago. Whereas Doyle was now remembering the experience with every cell in his body. And either he was paranoid, or it was obvious to everyone in the cinema who so much as glanced at them. He had the mortifying suspicion he was blushing, and that annoyed the hell out of him. But the last thing he wanted to do right now was confront Bodie directly. He said tightly, ‘I’ll get the tickets – you get the popcorn.’ 

Bodie seemed amazed. ‘It isn’t even Christmas, Scrooge,’ he pointed out. At Doyle’s glare, he backed away, laughing. ‘I’m not arguing.’ 

‘Bah humbug,’ Doyle muttered under his breath once the man had gone. But, despite himself, he found his eyes following his partner, approving of the dapper cream jacket and dark pants Bodie was wearing. Doyle sourly suspected the man would look good in anything. Which wasn’t conducive to Doyle’s peace of mind. Why should he like this infuriating man? Why should he continue to find the exterior so attractive, when the interior was either a mystery or the antithesis of everything Doyle believed in? 

He was so mad at Bodie and at himself that Doyle barely watched the movie. But somewhere during the two hours the anger became curiosity again. 

♦

‘So how _do_ you unwind?’ Doyle asked as Bodie drove him home. ‘If it isn’t drinking with the lads.’ 

Bodie shrugged, diligently watching the road. ‘I just put it out of my mind,’ he said easily. ‘Forget about it, switch it off. Not like you – you worry too much, Doyle.’ 

‘Come on, Bodie. I told you the truth.’ 

‘Would I lie to you?’ 

‘Probably.’ 

The man shook his head in mock dismay at this lack of faith. ‘It’s true. Look – I’ve seen worse, plenty worse. What we do – it doesn’t bother me so much. At least…’ 

‘What?’ Doyle prompted. 

‘At least we’re on the side of the angels, right?’ 

Doyle gazed at his partner, unsure how to interpret the sudden ache he felt in his heart. ‘Yeah, we’re on the side of the angels,’ he murmured. 

Bodie pulled the car over to the side of the road, and Doyle saw they had reached his flat already. He reached a hand over to Bodie’s shoulder, wanting to reassure his partner. Bodie looked across at him, expression neutral. 

But Doyle felt fear replace the ache. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ he said. If Bodie had misinterpreted Doyle’s gesture, he prayed the cool words would make matters clearer. 

‘Yeah,’ Bodie said, equally cool. And, as soon as Doyle had clambered out of the car, he drove off, far too fast. 

♦ ♦ ♦

Only Bodie would have the gall and opportunity to spend his sick leave mucking about on the Thames with his girlfriend, the lovely Julia, and then capture a notorious terrorist named Myer into the bargain, bringing Myer’s three comrades after him like hounds after a fox. Well, the fox was holed up somewhere with a wounded right hand and no back-up, and the pack were closing in, but Doyle and Cowley had little idea where – Bodie’s phone call had been cut off just before he could give his location. 

Doyle guessed Bodie would have gone boating in the Marlow area – an assumption soon proved right when the local police found the car Bodie had signed out of the CI5 car pool. They were also handling a complaint of a stolen car, complete with rubber dinghy, from the same carpark. Sounded just like Bodie’s style – and from the irate car-owner’s story, Bodie had both the terrorist and Julia with him. Doyle and Cowley followed the stolen car’s trail, coming across the discarded dinghy on the way. 

‘You’ve never told me about Bodie,’ Cowley said as Doyle drove them on their search. ‘I made you a team, what, two years ago?’ 

‘Two years,’ agreed Doyle, ‘and three months.’ And what a crazy three months they had been – if he remembered right, it was a discussion of the lovely myth of male bonding that had started all this off. 

‘Well, that’s long enough.’ 

‘Long enough for what?’ 

‘For him to get up your nose. Irritate you.’ 

‘Oh, he does that all right. Every day he does that.’ One thing for certain, working with Bodie was never dull. 

‘Chalk and cheese, eh?’ Cowley observed. ‘Aye, it’s worked well, though.’ 

‘Yeah, I’ve watched his back, he’s watched mine. We’re both still alive.’ Maybe it was only then that Doyle realised the seriousness of the situation – Bodie tangled up with the ruthless Myer-Helmut group, wounded, and with a girl to look after as well. ‘At least, this morning we were both still alive,’ Doyle amended, beginning to seriously doubt even Bodie could get out of this scrape. 

Now he thought about it, when Bodie had been shot in the hand last week, the bullet tearing up skin and ligaments but luckily little else, he and Doyle had both regarded it as little more than inconvenient. It was strange how human beings always assumed immortality, and stranger still how CI5 operatives continued to do so even after years in such a dangerous job. 

Cowley was obviously worried about this crazy scrape, too. It wasn’t like him to get sentimental, even about Bodie, though he typically did it in a suitably rough fashion: ‘Aye, Bodie gets up my nose, too. And so do you,’ he added for good measure. ‘But I want you both to stay alive.’ 

Meanwhile, Jax had found the stolen car abandoned off the road amongst some trees, complete with bullet holes. There was another car beside it. 

‘Which way, Doyle?’ Cowley barked when they came to it. 

‘I don’t know.’ 

‘Two years, three months – you know him better than any of us. _Which way?’_

Cowley and half of CI5 hung on Doyle’s answer. _I don’t know the man!_ he felt like protesting, wanting only to deserve this assumption being made. Wasn’t Bodie really closest to Cowley himself? But Doyle knew Bodie’s likely actions and reactions on the job, when he had a partner, at least. Doyle had to know them – or they wouldn’t survive. Though with the wild cards of Bodie’s injury, the girl, and Myer thrown in… ‘Well, Bodie would go for cover, sir.’ 

‘That’ll be the woods, then,’ Cowley said. 

‘Yeah.’ And God help Bodie and the lovely Julia, and all of them, if Doyle was wrong. 

♦

Cowley and Doyle at last tracked Bodie down to a large country house. They clambered over the car that had crashed through the front doors, and headed for the stairwell, where they could hear faint noises, maybe shouting. 

Doyle could just see Inge Helmut standing in a doorway up a flight of stairs, side on to him. She was about to shoot. Doyle lifted his handgun, got her in his sights. 

There was a shout, a female voice – ‘No!’ And a shot. Then Doyle’s shot immediately after. And Inge Helmut falling back down the stairs, lifeless. 

Silence for a moment. Who had fired that first shot? Bodie or Inge? Doyle surged up the stairs. _‘Bodie!’_ he yelled. 

Doyle took in the scene – Myer handcuffed safely – Bodie clambering to his feet – an older woman standing still, stunned. Doyle went to Bodie, helped him up, Doyle’s hands assuring him that Bodie was alive. ‘Are you all right?’ 

‘Yeah,’ Bodie said easily, with his amused relief the only sign that everything could have gone very wrong. And Bodie pushed him gently away, headed for Julia. Doyle walked away, his relief at Bodie’s safety soured by jealousy of the girl. 

Afterwards, he got the whole mess figured out. Julia had fired that first shot, protecting a helpless Bodie. It had been a good shot, too, particularly for a civilian, hitting Inge in the chest. Julia would have saved the day even if Doyle hadn’t been there. She’d never even handled a gun before. 

And then there was Sarah, the older woman, who lived in the house. She’d been calm, strong, resourceful, decent. Doyle reckoned Bodie would have been killed but for the two women. 

But it should have been him there at Bodie’s side. Again, guilt and gratitude were a nauseating combination. 

♦

Poor frustrated Bodie had yet another two weeks sick leave, because Myer had ground his good left hand underfoot. Cowley had magnanimously allowed Doyle and Bodie to buy him a truly alarming number of Scotches at the Red Lion that night. And now Doyle, having driven Bodie home and invited himself in for coffee, was sitting beside his partner, watching some awful movie on the television. 

‘Cowley can knock back the Scotch, can’t he?’ Doyle observed during a commercial break. 

Bodie just nodded absently in reply. He looked distinctly sorry for himself – Doyle supposed he would, too, with both hands out of commission and copiously wrapped in white bandages. 

Sorry for himself and at a complete Joss. Doyle hated to see his partner looking so useless. It wasn’t right that the man, usually all humour and vitality and strength, should be so pathetically reduced. 

‘I’ll stay tonight, make you breakfast. Is there someone to take care of you after that? Julia, maybe?’ 

‘I’ll be OK.’ 

‘Don’t be ridiculous – you can’t use your hands!’ 

Bodie was silent, so Doyle decided he was staying. 

Unfortunately that meant sharing Bodie’s bed with him. Doyle, having undressed each of them in a highly business-like, impersonal manner, lay still in the dark, carefully not touching his partner. They were both naked – and for the thousandth time Doyle kicked himself for the stupidity of that alone. _Didn’t have to strip Bodie completely, and you certainly didn’t have to do the same yourself._

And Bodie seemed so vulnerable and desolate right now. Doyle wanted to put a smile on the man’s face, a wisecrack on his lips. 

_Come off it, Doyle,_ he told himself, _sex didn’t put a smile on his face last time_. He answered himself right away – _How would you know? You didn’t even look at him._

But sex with Bodie surely wasn’t the answer to the friendship Doyle wanted. Honesty, security, support were what he wanted. Doyle was hardly going to find that in a homosexual encounter with another Intelligence operative. 

If only the whole idea wasn’t so compelling, so overwhelming, so necessary. 

_They were right,_ Doyle thought bleakly. All the kids at his school, the cops, the CI5 operatives and employees who’d assumed he was queer just because he didn’t fit in. Right now, it seemed they were very right after all. 

_Protect me,_ prayed Doyle, _from what I want._

He’d never been very good at telling himself _no._

Doyle rolled onto his side and moved closer to his partner, cuddling up to him before Bodie could tell him _no_ more persuasively. ‘Let me,’ Doyle said, the words he’d used last time. 

The only answer Bodie gave was to lift his arms roughly around Doyle, wrists and forearms running across his back instead of hands. Last time, they were still fully dressed – now, the touch of so much skin on warm damp skin was intoxicating. 

They moved to the same position, because Doyle wasn’t going to kiss Bodie, or go down on him, and the idea of fucking had barely crossed his mind. And, with Bodie’s hands off-limits, Doyle couldn’t easily think of any other way to make this happen. They moved to the same position, and began a steadily rolling rhythm, slow at first but quickly growing in intensity as they gained in confidence and need. 

He had started by wanting the sex sweet and simple, but what Doyle was getting was hard and hot – pressing the focus of himself against a Bodie so urgent that the whole thing became desperately terrifyingly vital – and soon he had no thought that sex between them could happen any other way. 

Again, the pleasure was intense, but the whole experience left Doyle feeling physically drained, and emotionally bruised. 

After the overwhelming sensations of orgasm had receded, he rolled clear. And, when he got his breath back, Doyle struggled out of the bed, reached for his clothes. 

‘You were going to stay and make me breakfast,’ Bodie said coldly. 

Doyle could find nothing to say. It was bloody obvious he couldn’t stay, wasn’t it? Bodie surely couldn’t want to talk about all this. Anyway, Doyle didn’t have the words – he had a wealth of confused feelings, but he had no way of telling Bodie about them. No _intention_ of telling Bodie. 

‘Running away, Doyle?’ 

‘You did, last time!’ Doyle said bitterly. He pulled his shoes on, then his jacket, stood up shakily. He should be getting used to all this sour, wildly conflicting emotion when it came to Bodie. 

‘Last time,’ Bodie muttered, ‘never happened.’ Then, louder – ‘You hear me? This never happened!’ 

‘I hear you,’ Doyle said over the bile. He headed for the front door. ‘Mad, fucking bastard,’ he said. And he didn’t care whether Bodie heard that or not. Then, hating himself for still caring even this much about his stupid invalid of a partner, he yelled, ‘I’ll call Julia for you.’ 

♦ ♦ ♦

But, of course, they couldn’t entirely avoid the topic of homosexuality. For the first time since school, Doyle dreaded the next time someone made a queer joke or a disparaging remark about him – dreaded the next time he and Bodie had to deal with a homosexual through a CI5 operation. The latter eventuated two weeks later, while they were investigating an old case that Cowley wanted re-opened – the death in 1953 of Suzy Carter, the sole witness in a corruption trial. 

The trail led Bodie and Doyle to Ann Berry, _now_ the owner of a home for dogs, but _then_ one of the police officers protecting Suzy Carter. Unfortunately someone else found her first. 

Doyle’s only image of Ann Berry was her corpse sprawled back in the grass. The dogs in their runs and cages around about were barking wildly. And there was a girl kneeling beside the dead woman, crying her eyes out, at a total loss. ‘She’s dead!’ But the awful truth hadn’t fully hit home yet. There was blood on the girl’s face from where she’d touched the body in disbelief and then thoughtlessly tried to wipe her tears away. And there was nothing Doyle could do but continue to track down the killer, the person who wanted to silence these people who knew about Suzy Carter’s fate. 

Ann Berry wasn’t the only victim – there was her old colleague, Edward Turner – and a young CI5 operative, Tony Miller, who’d been questioning Turner when they were both gunned down. And Doyle was always one impotent step behind the blood bath. 

Bodie and Doyle were looking through Ann Berry’s papers when the conversation that Doyle had been afraid of was initiated, surprisingly enough by Bodie. ‘She didn’t have a Rolls Royce,’ he observed. 

That had been what Eddy Turner had done with the money he’d been given to help kill Suzy Carter. A fancy car, and a holiday overseas each year. His widow had not only his death to cope with now, but the knowledge of what he’d done twenty-five years ago, and how they had benefited from it since. 

‘No,’ Doyle agreed. ‘But this place cost her fifty thousand.’ 

‘Yeah, when?’ 

‘1955.’ They exchanged a glance. That was a lot of money back then, especially for a retired police officer. But she’d bought a lovely place – a large old house, beautiful grounds – and had started up her own business. She had made good use of her thirty pieces of silver. ‘And she paid cash,’ Doyle added. After a long pause, he decided to jump in with both feet. It had to be said, no matter what mayhem was going on in their own lives. ‘You, er… get the same kind of feeling as I do about those two?’ 

Bodie was matter-of-fact about it. ‘What, only one bed being slept in, you mean?’ 

‘Yeah.’ Like a nervous stutter, Doyle repeated, ‘Yeah.’ 

‘It must have been murder for a policewoman with those kind of tendencies in the fifties,’ Bodie said, walking closer. But oh-so-cool. 

‘Be open to all kinds of bribery, blackmail, the lot.’ Which is when Doyle found evidence of the money being given to Ann Berry in 1953. Just after Suzy Carter’s death. He cheered his discovery, because he wanted the person behind all this. 

No one deserved to be killed, and particularly not to cover up corruption. Suzy Carter certainly hadn’t deserved death as a reward for being willing to testify. And Ann Berry and Eddy Turner hadn’t deserved death either, even though they’d killed Carter. And young Tony Miller, on his first assignment for CI5, had deserved it even less. 

Eddy Turner had remained in the police force. Maybe he thought he could salve his conscience, make up for the murder. But his widow now understood the nightmares that had plagued him for twenty-five years. As for Ann Berry, Doyle attributed even finer feelings to her. She couldn’t stomach staying in the Met, for a start. And, while it wasn’t an excuse, her homosexuality gave her a reason for having to go along with Carter’s murder. She wouldn’t have had much of a choice, whereas it appeared Turner had been motivated only by greed. 

Doyle’s thoughts turned to Bodie, as they invariably did these days. Times had changed since 1953. Surely, two male CI5 operatives having sex a couple of times was less of a risk than Ann Berry would have found back then in the police force. Perhaps Cowley was as unprejudiced about this as about so many other things. If it happened again, they’d just have to continue being utterly discreet. If – But there was little point in speculating about all that right now. 

Bodie had seemed accepting enough of Ann Berry’s inclinations, had himself suggested it as a reason behind what happened. But, of course, none of that necessarily meant Bodie was comfortable experiencing _those kind of tendencies_ himself. Or maybe it was simply that he didn’t want to experience them with Doyle. 

In fact, that was probably it, seeing as Bodie showed no interest in sharing the crazed sex again. Doyle knew that, if he was considered attractive, it wasn’t for any conventional idea of what good looks were. Doyle would never be in fashion, in the mode. And he didn’t have classic, timeless, beautiful features like Bodie did, either. Add to that, Doyle was obviously difficult to get along with. So few people had made the effort. Who could blame Bodie for wanting to keep their relationship strictly to what was necessary, their working partnership? Who could blame him, or expect anything else? 

Doyle would be the last one to do so. 

♦

Doyle waited for Bodie to hang up the phone. ‘Just going to see Tony Miller’s mother,’ Doyle said. ‘Want to come?’ 

‘Sure,’ said Bodie, after a moment. 

Relieved because Bodie was, surprisingly, so much better at comforting the grieving and that sort of thing than Doyle had ever been, Doyle didn’t think to ask about the phone call or Bodie’s brief look of regret until they were driving away from the Millers’ house. 

Bodie laughed. ‘Reckon you owe me about fifty quid, mate.’ He explained, ‘She’ll need a lot of wining and dining as an apology. I didn’t even get a chance to phone her back and call it off.’ 

‘She’ll be mad as hell.’ 

‘Yeah.’ Bodie shrugged. ‘You owe me dinner, too. She was going to make me lasagne.’ 

‘Dinner, it is,’ said Doyle. He drove them to his favourite Italian restaurant, and kept Bodie there past midnight. 

♦ ♦ ♦

Things seemed back to normal – or as normal as they ever were in CI5. Bodie was busy setting up double dates for the two of them, and a weekend of fishing that involved a pub with two double rooms booked and two beautiful, supposedly obliging barmaids. _OK, OK, I get the message,_ Doyle felt like protesting. _We’re straight._ But he was too happy at having Bodie’s exuberant company again to complain, and he played his part willingly enough. It all might be too superficial for true friendship, but it was pleasant. 

Except that was when Jill Haydon started haunting him. She showed up at a restaurant where they were having dinner. Doyle was furious – her father had killed his partner back in the Met. Syd Parker had been a decent man, an old-fashioned copper, nearing retirement age. Syd and his wife had been kind to Doyle, had taken an interest few others had bothered to. And Bill Haydon had shot Syd, had been tried and convicted, was currently serving a long jail sentence. But his daughter came to Doyle, protesting his innocence, asking for his help all this time later. ‘I remember it very clearly,’ he told her. ‘Goodbye!’ 

The two girls Doyle and Bodie had taken out to dinner ended up leaving, making a few lame excuses. Back at his flat, Doyle complained to Bodie, ‘She ruined the whole evening!’ 

Bodie was annoyed, too, but not at Jill Haydon. _‘She_ did? She just wanted to talk to you, that’s all. What did her father do to you, anyway, for God’s sake?’ 

‘Oh, not to me. Not me, mate,’ Doyle said bitterly. 

‘Look, I don’t know what this is about, but to hold a grudge…’ 

‘He killed my partner – Syd Parker, a good copper and a good friend.’ Tears were threatening. ‘Bill Haydon stuck a bullet right through the middle of him. Now, tell me, Bodie,’ Doyle yelled out, ‘how would you feel about that?’ 

Bodie just said, very clearly and casually, ‘I don’t know.’ 

Doyle stared at him. OK, that had been tantamount to asking for a declaration of affection. Not the done thing, old chap. Especially not right now. 

‘Sorry, mate.’ _For the temper, for the ruined date, for the whole shebang._

‘That’s OK,’ Bodie said. 

As normal as they ever were. 

♦ ♦ ♦

Another operative had been killed. Fraser. Doyle was angry, as he always was when it was one of their own. He and Bodie parked close to where the ambulance officers were dealing with the body, Cowley watching over them. 

Bodie was upset. ‘I had a drink with him just two nights ago. He had a premonition, you know.’ 

‘Oh yeah,’ Doyle grated, deliberately nasty in his anger. ‘What about?’ 

‘What do you think?’ Bodie threw at him, exasperated. ‘That he was going to die.’ 

Doyle was highly sceptical of this, and of all things beyond the everyday. There was enough to worry about as it was. ‘That’s the safest prediction I’ve heard in a long time,’ he said. ‘Hope you didn’t take any bets on it.’ 

Bodie turned away – from Doyle, from the body being loaded into the ambulance. Doyle still couldn’t quite believe that big, tough, simple Bodie was superstitious, but it was true – he wouldn’t sleep in Room 13 in a hotel, or walk under ladders, and was wary of black cats. And now he apparently believed in premonitions of your own impending death. Doyle hoped he’d never have to go into an op with Bodie in that state of mind, expecting to die. 

At last Bodie said, ‘You know what I mean.’ He sounded truly upset, vulnerable, close to tears even. 

Doyle regarded his partner, who was still facing away. He reckoned Bodie was incapable of crying. Nevertheless, Doyle had no excuse for taking his anger out on the man, particularly when he was in this state. ‘Yeah, I know what you mean,’ Doyle replied gently after a long silence. Bodie turned and their gazes met for the briefest moment. 

Not knowing whether to be glad or scared that his comfort meant so much to Bodie at that moment, Doyle broke away immediately. Cowley was there, anyway. Life went on, for some at least. 

♦

Back in Cowley’s office, they realised that Fraser had been in a bowling alley when he’d first called Cowley, when he’d said he’d been onto something big. None of them had the first idea what that something was – Fraser had been on a fairly routine drugs case at the time, and a bowling alley seemed an unlikely place to find criminal activity of even the routine drugs variety. 

‘Get over there, the pair of you, and stake it out,’ Cowley ordered. 

‘What do we look for?’ Bodie made the mistake of asking. 

‘Don’t ask me, Bodie, that’s your job, what you’re paid for! Sniff hard, be alert, anything unusual.’ 

Doyle broke into the tirade before Bodie could put his other foot in his mouth as well. ‘Yes, sir, we understand, sir.’ 

‘I should hope you do,’ Cowley said. 

‘Stake-out,’ Bodie said vaguely. Then he caught sight of Cowley’s expression. ‘Running all the way, sir,’ he declared. 

Doyle, turning to drag the man out of harm’s way, saw Cowley’s smile. It was both charming and charmed. And Doyle knew it was only ever bestowed on Bodie. He had to grin – they were all suckers for the man, but he and Cowley seemed to have it bad. 

♦

A few hours later, just past midnight, Doyle was helping defuse an atomic bomb. ‘Well, take your time,’ he said calmly to the guy who’d built it, and who was now dismantling it in the bowling alley. ‘You’ve got thirty seconds.’ 

They managed it before the bomb was timed to explode. Cowley ran in with a bunch of soldiers and men in suits just as London would have otherwise been demolished. That’s when Doyle’s hands began shaking. 

The worst of it was that it was almost three hours before Cowley would let Bodie and Doyle go – there were too many people who had to know every little detail of what had happened. But at least he then gave them twenty-eight hours’ unconditional leave. 

Bodie drove them to Doyle’s flat. ‘Look, mate,’ Doyle said once Bodie had pulled the car up. ‘I’m not going to get any sleep tonight. You want to come up and have a beer or something?’ 

And he nerved himself to hear _no._ In the silence, Doyle remembered the disasters that had resulted from exactly the same innocent intentions – winding down together, sharing the stress in an effort to dissipate it. He was certain Bodie was thinking the same. For a moment Doyle wondered whether he could simply go and wake his mother up – she’d surely be all right about it – but he decided it wouldn’t really be fair of him. 

‘OK,’ Bodie eventually said, easily enough. 

Doyle looked away, climbed out of the car. ‘Good,’ he thought to say. Except once they were sitting in the lounge room, beers in hand, Mozart on the stereo, and more than a decorous distance between them – Doyle had no idea what to do or say. Every possible option he considered seemed fraught with potential strife. 

Bodie’s voice finally startled him from his worried reverie. ‘Come on, Doyle, get it off your chest.’ Bodie took a swallow of his beer. ‘You like talking it out at times like this, don’t you? So talk!’ 

‘All right.’ But it took Doyle several more minutes to get going. ‘Never came face to face with an atomic bomb before. Mad bastards. Would have taken out all of London.’ He thought for a moment of the people he knew, who had no idea how close they had been to holocaust – his mother, his and Bodie’s girlfriends, colleagues from the Met and CI5. ‘It’s the ultimate violence, isn’t it? Unleashing nature’s powers against all those people. Millions dead at once.’ 

‘Ultimate? They haven’t even started yet,’ Bodie said. ‘Someone’s going to invent something soon enough to take out the whole damn planet.’ 

Doyle shuddered. ‘Violence without rules, without limits – that’s what scares me.’ He looked across at his partner. ‘It’s in me, you know. That black guy at the bowling alley tonight, Martin Taylor. I was all set to kill him, right there in the heat of it, in front of everyone. If you hadn’t stopped me –’ 

A brief, supremely physical memory of Bodie all over him, sitting on him, trying to talk sense to him through his fury at Taylor’s taunting. And even when Doyle had supposedly given in and been allowed to stand up, Bodie had immediately anticipated Doyle’s attempt to get at Taylor again, had grabbed him at the exact moment, as if he knew Doyle far too well. 

‘All because of a stupid game. Bowling, for God’s sake. And it wasn’t just me – there he was waiting outside for us, wanting to pick a fight. I tried to keep it under control, but he got right up my nose.’ 

Bodie said, ‘He was provoking, all right. Almost decked him myself.’ 

‘No, you didn’t. You’re too cool – me, I get too hot and bothered, lose control. That’s why I joined the cops, you know. I was a right tearaway when I was a kid. All fire. Got in a heap of trouble, fighting and all. Put one kid in hospital. Needed some discipline.’ 

‘Well, you do all right now,’ Bodie said. 

Doyle shook his head. ‘It’s still all in there, simmering away. One day I’ll get into a _real_ rage, and then God help us all.’ 

Bodie paid him the compliment of not accusing him of exaggeration. 

‘It’s still all in there,’ Doyle finally confessed. ‘I inherited it from my Dad. It’s in the Doyle blood.’ 

‘Well, I believe in environment having more influence than heredity.’ Bodie added lightly, ‘Which is a pity, in my case.’ 

‘I miss out both ways. Dad left us when I was six, but he knocked Mum and me about whenever he felt like it until then.’ 

Bodie went out to the kitchen to pick up two more beers. ‘Get this into you.’ He sat down beside Doyle on the sofa. ‘You know, this demon of yours, this violence. You use it – it doesn’t use you. And you do good with it.’ 

Doyle guffawed. ‘Eighty percent of the time, if I’m lucky.’ 

‘I’m not kidding, Doyle. Your Dad didn’t manage even eighty percent, did he? If it was ever a problem, you’ve solved it. Anyway,’ he added, ‘Cowley let you in CI5, didn’t he? If he thought you weren’t in control, you wouldn’t have had a chance.’ 

Staring at his partner, Doyle said, ‘I’m waiting… Last time you said something that nice to me, you put the boot in right after.’ 

Bodie shrugged. ‘I’ll let you off this time.’ 

Doyle saw again all the beauty of his partner, thought of all his surprises, all his affection despite everything. And all this would have been lost – Doyle had seen a documentary and a very bad mini-series about the effects of nuclear war. Both had been graphic, but the documentary had been the worst. To depict the effects of an atomic bomb on a human being, it had used shards of glass exploding through, of all things, a pumpkin. Doyle’s mind superimposed the image on Bodie’s face. 

He lifted a shaking hand to draw a finger along the man’s cheek, trying to convince himself it hadn’t happened. ‘One false move when I was helping that guy –’ Bodie would be no more than a cinder. Cowley with all his ruthless moral energy would be gone. London flattened, with its precious millions of people. This flat where they were sitting would be less than debris. 

‘Don’t do this to yourself, Doyle. You’ve got too much imagination for your own good.’ 

Doyle didn’t bother wondering how Bodie knew what he was thinking. Doyle’s gaze shifted to his own hand. ‘I could have blown London away,’ he whispered. 

‘But you didn’t.’ Then Bodie again followed his train of thought. ‘You’re not going to even _contemplate_ thinking it would have been your fault, are you?’ 

‘I know you don’t –’ 

‘Hey!’ Bodie grabbed Doyle’s hand, focussed the man’s attention on himself. ‘You’re such a prat, Doyle. Taking the guilt of the world on your shoulders, London’s blood on your hands. _And it didn’t even happen_.’ 

‘I know, but –’ 

‘No _buts,_ Doyle. Don’t do this. We saved the day _– you_ saved us. That’s enough. The _what ifs_ and _might have beens_ can go to hell.’ 

‘Yeah.’ Doyle looked away. His conscience wouldn’t let his demon be, but maybe that was necessary. Despite that, or because of it, Doyle had let himself join CI5 – where they went armed, where they were authorised to use any means necessary, where there were so few rules. But Cowley made those rules, and while he had the ruthlessness of a demon, he had morals and such faith in them, such integrity. Doyle trusted the man, with all he was. Implicitly. And Bodie was right – Cowley trusted Doyle in tum. Cowley had even set Doyle to watch his favourite’s back. 

‘And what would your mother be saying right now?’ Bodie was asking rhetorically, teasing, maybe seeing Doyle’s lighter expression through his weariness. 

‘Same thing.’ 

‘There you go. And if you didn’t listen, she’d probably yell at you until you did.’ 

Doyle leant his head back on the sofa, looked at Bodie. Their hands were still clasped together, lying ignored now on Doyle’s thigh. ‘Don’t yell at me, Bodie. I couldn’t take it right now.’ 

‘No.’ Instead, Bodie pulled Doyle up and into his arms, then settled them both back into an undemanding cuddle. ‘You’re such a prat, Doyle,’ he repeated. 

‘Must be true. Even you think so.’ 

‘For what it’s worth,’ Bodie started, voice a little uneven, ‘I don’t know where I’d be without you and Cowley. Still in the jungle, one way or the other, I suppose.’ 

Silence for a moment while Doyle considered all the implications of both the content of this statement and the fact that Bodie had actually said it. ‘That’s worth a lot, Bodie.’ 

An age later, when Doyle had at last relaxed into a comfortable sprawl within Bodie’s arms, Bodie murmured, ‘Let’s go to your bed, Doyle.’ 

Stirring himself, Doyle sat up a little to examine his partner’s expression. There was uncertainty there, but a vast need as well. ‘Not like the other times,’ Doyle said. ‘Not rough like that.’ 

‘No, not like that.’ 

‘All right.’

Bodie was leaning closer, slowly, as if wary of startling Doyle, frightening him off. And, when Doyle didn’t move, didn’t draw away, Bodie kissed him on the mouth – a firm, sensual kiss, kindling Doyle’s own need. 

Bodie took the initiative, made the sex loving rather than driven, personal rather than mindless. In Doyle’s bed, they were naked, emotionally as well as physically, full of wonder. In such a state, it only took the simplest things to keep their need for each other simmering – Bodie’s lips and teeth at Doyle’s nipples, Doyle’s hands touching another man’s cock and balls for the first time, Bodie’s caresses down Doyle’s back and buttocks, Doyle’s mouth and hands exploring Bodie’s powerful shoulders. Their orgasms, when they couldn’t be held back any longer, were exquisite. And Bodie’s face, as he watched Doyle’s completion, was divine. He even murmured that Doyle was beautiful. 

And, as the orgasms faded into memory, Bodie and Doyle cuddled up close with each other, closer than they’d been even during the sex – arms wrapped tightly, legs tangled, faces hidden, skin caressing. 

Doyle lay drowsy and satiated, postponing sleep for only one moment more. ‘And I suppose this never happened either?’ he asked, content that it should be that way if it had to be. 

Bodie chuckled a little, but he was serious when he replied, ‘This _in particular_ never happened.’ 

♦ ♦ ♦

Doyle sat at his mother’s kitchen table, telling the story of how he and Bodie had captured and then lost an international terrorist named Ramos, and then had rescued Mandy Mitchell in the nick of time from a building under demolition, where Ramos had left her gagged and bound as a hostage against his escape. 

‘You mean you ran into the building while they were still knocking it down?’ Eileen Doyle asked more than once. 

‘We were in a hurry,’ Doyle explained with great unconcern. 

Doyle didn’t, however, tell his mother of the end to the story, of Cowley’s inventive solution to the problem of Ramos. He didn’t know what he thought of that himself yet – Cowley deliberately placing Ramos in the hands of someone whose violence was unchecked by the West’s notion of morals. Someone who had killed Ramos outright, no matter that Ramos had given them the pretext of an attempted escape. Even that escape might have been a story, to make the truth a little more palatable to Cowley or to Doyle. 

But Doyle supposed there were some people, just a handful in the world, who deserved, even deliberately _earned,_ a more Eastern eye-for-an-eye brand of justice. Ramos had killed untold numbers of people, innocents and civilians among them; had never stayed his hand; if he had a conscience, he’d never let it interfere with his pleasure; he’d been inventively cruel. Did such a being deserve any fate other than that dealt him? He had even had the option of Cowley’s more British form of justice, and had refused it. 

No, Doyle wouldn’t tell his mother of Cowley’s solution to Ramos. This time, he avoided the problems, all the frustrations of the story. Instead, there were some amusing tales to tell. 

He and Bodie had been guarding an American diplomat, Doctor Harbinger, when he went jogging – to confuse potential assassins, they had both worn tracksuits identical to Harbinger’s – bright red! ‘And Bodie reckoned we should have made Harbinger dress in camouflage khakis,’ Doyle said, ‘rather than all doing ourselves up as bloody parrots! Pardon the French,’ he added. 

Eileen just smiled. Swearing was the last thing she worried about when it came to her son. 

Then Doyle described the fun of busting into the estate of one of the richest men in Britain, with the expert assistance of the very petty burglar, Sammy Martin. And all the way in, there was Bodie giving the hapless incompetent Sammy all sorts of tips for future endeavours – before dropping him back in prison. ‘We told them just to keep him in for a few hours, of course, for his own protection, until we’d got Ramos sorted out. _He_ thought he was back in the nick for good! He’ll be free by now – and no doubt he’s putting all Bodie’s advice to very good use.’ Doyle shook his head. ‘I should probably arrest Bodie for aiding and abetting a known criminal.’ 

The topper of the whole story was realising that Ramos was actually after Cowley, not Harbinger – that Ramos had infiltrated the deserted CI5 building. Doyle had rung the alarm from the foyer, praying Cowley would hear it under the shower in his en suite, and he and Bodie had run up to Cowley’s office, expecting disaster. They should have known better. ‘There was Cowley, totally cool and unruffled – unarmed – and naked but for a towel around his waist – having just knocked one of the most dangerous terrorists in the world out cold. He hadn’t even bothered to handcuff the man, or stand over him with a gun!’ 

Eileen observed, ‘He leaves those tedious little details to you and Bodie, I suppose.’ 

Then Ramos had made the mistake of calling Bodie a copper. Bodie’s pride was inevitably mortally offended by being classed as just another police officer – that slip of etiquette guaranteed Ramos some rough treatment. 

In fact, Bodie’s prejudice against coppers had caused Doyle some pretty shabby treatment himself when the pair first met on the CI5 training program. Not that Doyle hadn’t been equally anti when it came to ex-mercenaries. He remembered a time when – 

‘Ray,’ Eileen Doyle interrupted gently. ‘I could tell you the story by heart. Complete with embellishments.’ 

Doyle had the grace to look self-conscious. ‘Sorry.’ 

His mother smiled, amused. ‘And what is the reason for this preoccupation with young Bodie? Has he been giving you trouble again?’ 

‘What do you mean?’ Doyle asked, immediately on the defensive. ‘What gave you that idea?’ 

‘You haven’t stopped talking about him, dear. You weren’t telling me about this terrorist just then – it was all _Bodie said this,_ and _Bodie did that._ And I was about to get yet another re-cap of the history of your partnership with him. It just made me wonder…’ 

‘Wonder what?’ 

‘Well…’ Eileen laughed a little, and looked sharply at her son. ‘What _are_ you getting all flustered about?’ 

Doyle swallowed hard, and forced a smile. _Mothers aren’t prescient or omniscient,_ he reminded himself, _they just like to give that impression._ ‘It’s nothing, really. Just – we had a terrible time in a bowling alley recently…’ He grinned to himself at the understatement. ‘And Bodie was really good to me afterwards.’ _I will not even think about the sex right now._ ‘It was way too late to call on you. He came around, and we talked, and… Well, I think he’s a friend, you know? Not a mate or just someone I work with – a friend.’ And Doyle looked across at his mother, unsure of what he’d said, of how it had come across, and of everything he was hiding from her. 

‘That’s wonderful, Ray,’ she said, and held his hand for a moment. ‘That’s really wonderful.’ 

When his mother got up to make another pot of tea, Doyle stared sightlessly at his hands on the table. Wondering what her reaction would be if Doyle confessed that he and Bodie had, just for that one night after the atomic bomb, become something more – or should that be _something less?_ – than friends. He guessed disapproval would be the least of it. Not remembering that he wasn’t alone, he sighed. It didn’t really matter, did it – seeing as _it_ had never actually happened. 

♦ ♦ ♦

It seemed that even Cowley had been in love once, had had some measure of happiness. He’d sent Bodie and Doyle running off to look after Annie Irvine, an activist combining left wing politics with Christianity, who was visiting from the States, when she shouldn’t have been any of CI5’s concern at all. And her reaction when she found out who they worked for? A delighted, ‘Georgie? Georgie sent you!’ 

Atfirst, Bodie didn’t seem to believe it. ‘Oh, come on. Cowley and the opposite sex?’ he asked as they drove back to HQ. ‘You must be joking!’ 

‘He must be an attractive man, I suppose,’ Doyle mused. He abruptly felt himself on shaky ground, but forged ahead. ‘I mean, he’s a bit aggressive, but he would be attractive. Wouldn’t he?’ Doyle finished lamely. 

‘I’ve not noticed,’ Bodie said, bunging on an effeminate tone for all he was worth. 

Doyle couldn’t decide whether Bodie feeling able to joke about it was good or bad – either he’d forgotten all about why they shouldn’t be camping it up with each other, or he was very comfortable, even alone with Doyle. 

‘I was just thinking,’ Bodie said. ‘Cowley and a woman…’ 

‘He’d kick the door down,’ Doyle hypothesised, ‘throw her on the bed…’ 

‘And frisk her,’ Bodie declared. 

Doyle hadn’t laughed so hard in months. But Bodie’s tone changed when they were explaining to Cowley the security they’d arranged. Once through all the detail, all of which Cowley approved, Bodie started, ‘Nevertheless, sir… Well, Doyle and myself, sir. We were, well, we’d feel more secure if –’ 

Watching his partner, a bemused Doyle waited for Bodie to get to the point. But Bodie dug himself in deeper first. 

‘No, well, we’d feel _happier,_ sir, if you’d go there yourself. Check us out.’ 

‘Go there myself!’ Cowley burst out, as if he’d never heard of such a thing. 

‘We’d feel happier, sir,’ Bodie reiterated. 

_Speak for yourself!_ thought Doyle. 

‘Go there myself…’ The idea was obviously growing on their boss. 

‘Give it the once over, you know,’ Bodie said. Then, as if all the rest hadn’t been obvious anyway, he qualified, ‘The _assignment,_ sir. The stake-out.’ 

Doyle could hardly believe the evidence of his own ears. Bodie, having settled things to his – and presumably, hopefully, Cowley’s – satisfaction, left the office with him. Doyle looked at his rough, tough, ex-mercenary partner. Unbelievable. 

‘Cupid,’ Doyle accused. He didn’t get any argument, either. 

♦

The most peace and quiet they ever had on duty was a deck of cards, a newspaper and a pot of tea down in the CI5 basement kitchen. Bodie was speculating over whether Cowley and Annie Irvine had been childhood sweethearts or not. Their ages were all wrong, though. ‘Love unrequited,’ Bodie at last declared it. 

Doyle was amazed by his partner all over again. ‘You turning sentimental, Bodie?’ he asked. 

‘No,’ Bodie replied: ‘Nosy.’ 

Well, Doyle had to admit that was true. But he wasn’t fooled about the rest – his Bodie had a sentimental streak a mile wide, at least when it came to Cowley. 

‘I’m also something of an opportunist,’ Bodie was continuing. ‘Listen, Cowley’s got a file on us like _that.’_

Bodie’s hands indicated a file consisting of somewhere in the region of a forest’s worth of paper. If he’d been feeling nasty, Doyle would have suggested there really wasn’t that much to know about his dear simple partner. As it was, he began contemplating how he could lift Bodie’s file from Personnel, for a little light reading. 

‘He even knows what side of the bed we get out of.’ 

‘And whose bed,’ Doyle added, without much consideration. He wouldn’t have been game enough if he’d thought about it. But he didn’t win a reaction. 

‘Yeah,’ said Bodie, not even blinking an eyelid. 

But what sort of reaction had Doyle been expecting when _it_ had never happened? Maybe Bodie had put it right out of his mind, just as he did with work when it suited him. 

And then Doyle wondered if Cowley _did_ know whose bed they had shared recently. Surely not. Though Cowley was even more omniscient than a mother. 

‘So it would be nice to have something over him, wouldn’t it?’ Bodie was continuing. ‘Let’s face it – we don’t know much about George Cowley.’ 

They were about to find out a little bit more, however. The janitor, Charley, who had served with Cowley during the war, finally broke into their wild speculations with some of the true story of Cowley and Annie. Doyle didn’t listen to much. He was too busy falling in love. 

Maybe, after all they’d been through since they’d met, and especially over the past few months, all it took was discovering that Bodie was more romantic at heart than Doyle. Yet another surprise from this man who, at surface, was so prosaically straightforward. Or maybe Doyle had been falling for him all along, and had only just now realised it. Or perhaps Doyle didn’t want to miss out on love, like the ill-fated Cowley so obviously had. Or Doyle was following Cowley’s example in falling for the most impossible person available. 

Memories of the sweet sex he’d shared with Bodie two weeks ago, the sex that had _particularly_ never happened, flooded over Doyle, leaving him dazed and warm. 

But what did Bodie himself feel or want? By turns, his behaviour had been encouraging or brutally indifferent, loving or cruel, friendly or reserved. But never very open, never very trusting. 

_Dear Lord,_ pleaded Doyle yet again. _Protect me… from what I want._ Except the prayer hadn’t helped last time. And he was going to try for Bodie’s love, he knew. Doyle could never, ever tell himself _no_. 

♦ ♦ ♦

But before Doyle had even come up with a strategy in his campaign for Bodie, let alone summoned the nerve to carry it out, the Ku Klux Klan reared their ugly heads in Britain. They had terrorised a black lawyer named Zadie, who was working for a group of Negroes being evicted by force from their homes. Cowley’s reaction was vehement. ‘I don’t like it! I hate it! I revile it!’ 

‘It’s still police business, sir,’ Doyle said carefully. 

‘Not anymore. I’m making it our business – _my_ business.’ 

‘That’s over-reacting a bit, isn’t it?’ Bodie said. ‘I mean, all they did is plant a cross in a spade’s garden.’ 

Doyle winced. 

Cowley was calm at first. He took off his glasses. ‘Bodie. You’re taller than me, and you’re bigger.’ That was when he started yelling. ‘But if you ever use that word again in this office, you’ll find out that you’re not tougher.’ 

Bodie looked as penitent as he ever did. Which involved dropping his gaze, but still looking truculent. 

‘All right, so I’m over-reacting,’ Cowley admitted after a moment. ‘But I’ve seen and fought prejudice of one kind or another all my life. And I intend to keep on fighting it. They lit a torch last night, a small one – but fire spreads fast. That’s why this is a CI5 job – we’re the firefighters.’ 

♦

Doyle and Bodie reached the area Zadie was trying to protect just in time to see another body being loaded into another ambulance. The word was that this young man, Arty, had been pushed from a rooftop. 

‘You go tell Cowley,’ Bodie suggested. ‘I’ll stay around and nose about a bit.’ 

When Doyle returned, he found Zadie in conference with Cowley. Apparently Arty had been trying to contact Zadie just before his death. 

Eventually, Cowley asked, ‘Where’s Bodie?’ 

‘Checking on the dead man.’ 

‘He’s moving fast,’ Cowley murmured, surprised. 

Smiling a little, Doyle said, ‘Maybe he had something on his conscience.’ He reflected that Cowley’s opinions, both of Bodie himself and of anything else, had always been important to his partner. If anything or anyone was going to start him thinking along different lines, then a well-earned tirade from Cowley was it. 

Doyle was still at HQ when Bodie’s call came in – he’d been stabbed, and it sounded serious. Doyle only waited long enough to find out where the ambulance would take him, before racing out. 

♦

A long hospital corridor. Antiseptic and polished. Quiet efficiency. And Bodie being wheeled along on a gurney. 

He didn’t belong here – this beautiful and vital man didn’t belong flat on his back, helpless, pale, and filthy with sweat and blood and dirt. 

It was going to be a close thing. One look told Doyle that, never mind the meaningless reassurances of the nurses and doctors. His partner might die. Nothing was worth that. 

And, once again, Bodie had been hurt when Doyle wasn’t there to watch his back. If Bodie got through this, Doyle was going to stick so close to this man, he’d think they were Siamese twins. 

‘Oh, Bodie,’ Doyle said, a little angry, grieving already. He knew his eyes were full of tears, but he wouldn’t pretend otherwise. ‘You half-Irish son of a bitch – what did you want to go and do that for?’ 

Bodie heard him, recognised him. ‘Ray.’ 

‘What?’ 

‘Tell Cowley – a couple of spades did this.’ Bodie didn’t have to search for the last of his strength – it was all there in his hate. ‘Two big black spades.’ 

Doyle didn’t say anything, couldn’t. Bodie thought his prejudice was justified now – and there was no way to argue with him, no point in trying. But it wasn’t right that anyone so close to death should have all that bitter hate as their only truth. It wasn’t right that Bodie’s soul should be so burdened. Doyle felt so sorry for him, sorry for the whole mess, sorrow for that hate. 

Unless the hate would pull Bodie out of this, give him the will to refuse to let those ‘spades’determine his fate. 

Doyle kept walking, reaching a hand to hold Bodie’s for a minute before they took him into the operating theatre. Doyle knew he was close to breaking down. Because he loved this man, he still loved the racist pig-headed bastard. More than ever. And Bodie didn’t even know it. 

But it didn’t become a CI5 operative to stand around uselessly, crying over his stupid partner. 

He borrowed some of Bodie’s anger – because the people who had done this, and the case that had put Bodie in this place, deserved justice being meted out. Not because they were black, but because they had unleashed their violence on Bodie. And because, by the time Doyle was through with them, Bodie might be dead. 

And Doyle drew on his guilt – he should have been with Bodie. He should never have left him alone out there. 

He let Bodie’s anger and his own guilt feed his fury. Let justice be done. 

♦

‘I’m pulling you off the case,’ Cowley said, sitting behind his desk. 

‘No, you’re not,’ Doyle told him in no uncertain terms. 

‘You’re too keyed up, too involved.’ 

_And Bodie was right_ – _it gives you a cutting edge._ ‘You pull me off, you suspend me,’ Doyle said with all his barely controlled fury, ‘and you’ll have to put a bullet through me, because I shall still be there. Do you understand me, Cowley? _Mr Cowley!’_

‘Well…’ Cowley stood. Maybe Doyle had surprised him for once. Maybe he hadn’t been expecting such fierce loyalty from this loner. ‘I wouldn’t want all that hot air working against me.’ He paused. ‘All right.’ 

‘Thank you,’ Doyle said, almost civil again, though still furious. Still that – but he could save the fury now, for the next necessary stage. ‘And I’m sorry,’ he added, which was true even if unapologetically delivered. 

‘So am I.’ Cowley bent to fetch his bottle of Scotch, two glasses. ‘Bodie was a good man – _is_ a good man,’ he corrected himself. ‘Even if he will call a spade a spade.’ 

Doyle mused over Cowley’s words. They were all assuming Bodie would die, they were already dismissing him from their lives. Doyle could guess what his superstitious Bodie would think of that – a jinx, a death-wish. He’d demand some positive thinking, some psychic support from the people he cared about. Doyle didn’t suppose he headed that list, but surely his undeclared love and his determined fury would bolster anyone’s spirits. _I even braved Cowley for you, mate,_ Doyle thought to his partner. _So you’d better live and make it worth my while._

♦

Pain. Pain from Doyle’s head to his toes. His face and his skull, and his ribs and everything they were meant to contain. Pain. 

But there was help, in the unexpected form of a young black kid. Tommy. ‘I’ve never seen anyone so nicely beat up!’ the kid exclaimed, admiring the artistry and thoroughness of it all. And, ‘You’re going to have an eye blacker than my arse.’ Doyle had to smile, even though that hurt, too. 

And then it turned out that Tommy had known Arty, the man who’d died. It was a small world. 

‘Look, Tommy,’ Doyle said, holding the boy close, so that he could see Tommy’s face through the pain. ‘You said Arty was your friend. Well, I had a –’ Now he was doing it, too. _Sorry, Bodie. Stay alive, Bodie! You dumb lovely son of a bitch._ ‘I’ve _got_ a friend, too. And he was trying to find out who pushed Arty off the roof. But somebody slid a knife into his ribs.’ 

‘That happened right here!’ Tommy said. 

It was a small, small world. 

‘What do you know about all this?’ Doyle asked, having found his determination again. Fury was a potent pain-killer. 

♦

Bodie didn’t die. Doyle wondered if he’d ever really feared Bodie’s charmed life could end. And, typically, Bodie looked one-hundred-and-ten percent, while Doyle was still covered in sticking plaster and bruises. Doyle stood with Jax, raiding Bodie’s fruit bowl at the hospital, while Bodie thanked his doctor. His black doctor. 

As Doyle watched, Bodie stepped closer to the man. ‘Doctor, you know when I was thrashing around back there. Did I say anything?’ 

‘Nothing I haven’t heard before,’ the man said, almost gently. 

‘Yeah, well, you won’t be hearing it again – from me.’ 

It seemed Bodie had come a long way. Maybe on top of Cowley’s tirade, Cowley’s expectations, it had simply taken this – a decent and skilled man, who did all he could for Bodie despite Bodie’s hate and abuse. Surely one answer to racism was to start seeing the trees, not a misconception of the wood – know a person, not apply a generalisation. 

‘OK,’ the doctor said to Bodie, privately. ‘Goodbye and good luck!’ he said to them all. 

‘Thanks, Doc,’ Doyle said. 

‘You’ll need it,’ the doctor added. 

_To handle Bodie? Yes!_ Maybe the man was clairvoyant. Because Doyle had plans, and those plans and their desired outcome were seething around in his head, simmering in his blood. And there was Bodie, looking beautiful, and very healthy, and very happy. 

‘All systems go,’ Bodie was saying, that familiar glint in his eye, that sensual twist to his lips. ‘Back to normal.’ 

Jax and Doyle laughed at the supremely confident innuendo. Doyle said, ‘Well, it will be as soon as you can stand up straight.’ _With my help, if I have anything to do with it._

Bodie bounced a grape off Doyle’s head as he passed. 

‘That kid, Tommy,’ Doyle said. ‘There’s a football match this afternoon I promised we’d take him to.’ _A bit of gratuitous male bonding at the game_ – _and this evening, when it’s just you and me…_

‘Yeah, great,’ Bodie was saying as he let himself out into the corridor. ‘Only, I’ve got this other engagement.’ 

Doyle looked blankly at the lovely black woman heading Bodie’s way. She was smiling like the sun rose over Bodie’s shoulder. Holding his hand. This certainly wasn’t part of Doyle’s plans. 

‘Listen, enjoy the football, will you?’ And Bodie added, ‘Give my love to Tommy.’ 

Doyle was left standing with Jax. Flabbergasted. 

_Well, typical Bodie_ – Cowley’s opinion, and the doctor’s altruistic skill were fine, but add a beautiful woman to the argument, and Bodie would give in with all his grace and charm. Doyle didn’t know whether to be glad Bodie had seen the light, or annoyed that his plans had fallen through. Yet again, his partner created one hell of a conflict within Doyle, without even being aware of it. 

Damn the man! 

♦ ♦ ♦

Doyle couldn’t wait longer than ten the following morning. Even at that, he felt he was being generous – anyone else would have insisted Bodie come to the football, and would have said to the bird, ‘You must be Betty.’ Hell, even Doyle would have if he’d thought of it in time. Except that wiping that cheeky smile off Bodie’s face wouldn’t have made a good start. 

Ten in the morning. Bodie answered his door promptly, in his white towelling robe, mug of coffee in one hand. ‘Ray, mate. Want a cuppa?’ 

‘Ta.’ Doyle followed him in and through to the kitchen, surprised at the ease of the friendly greeting. He had to remind himself Bodie had no reason to be angry. Yet. ‘Er… I’m not interrupting anything, am I?’ Doyle thought to ask. 

Bodie just cocked an enquiring eyebrow. 

_God, he’s adorable._ ‘That bird,’ Doyle elaborated. 

‘No, just took her to lunch down the river,’ Bodie said. ‘We didn’t even have dinner.’ 

Doyle was glad. Which was unfair, but honest. He let himself smile. 

Bodie put the kettle on. ‘How was the football?’ 

And Doyle filled in the time with trivia about the match, about young Tommy and Jax, about any bloody thing except what he most wanted to talk about. Though, when it came to the crunch, facing Bodie over the coffee table in the lounge room, Doyle’s words dried up entirely. 

‘What is it, mate?’ Bodie eventually asked him. 

_Fools rush in…_ Doyle swallowed hard and started with a plea. ‘Just don’t throw me out until I’m done, OK? You’ll probably be madder than hell.’ 

Bodie looked amused, but resigned. ‘Out with it, Doyle.’ 

‘It’s something you told me never to talk about. But things have changed, Bodie. At least – I’ve realised a few things.’ Doyle looked up to see how he was doing. _Very poorly,_ he assumed. Bodie was beginning to show distinct signs of embarrassment and anger. He’d twigged to the topic. 

‘Just say what you came to say.’ 

‘I asked you once whether you’d had sex with other men. And you told me to shut up. But I want to _know,_ Bodie.’ 

‘It’s none of your damned business.’ 

‘Yes, it is my business, and you don’t need me to tell you why.’ 

Bodie looked ready to kill him. After a while, he answered in a voice choked with bitterness, ‘I wouldn’t dignify it with the word _sex._ But, yes. And you were right – Krivas was one of them. Happy now, Detective Constable?’ 

Doyle watched his partner carefully. No – knowing that much of Bodie’s sad history didn’t exactly make him happy – and, even though he’d wanted Bodie to have had the experience, the brutal truth didn’t give Doyle the hope he’d counted on. Nevertheless, he continued, ‘This time I’ll listen – I already have, I kept to what you said – it never happened between us. And if you tell me to shut up this time, that’s the last you’ll hear of it, I promise.’ 

_Silence._

_OK._ It was maybe the most difficult thing Doyle had ever done – to lay bare his feelings right here and right now, with Bodie sitting there looking like the hard-bitten warrior that some part of him still was. ‘I’ve fallen for you, mate,’ Doyle started, in the easiest tones he knew how. ‘Daft, I know, but there it is. No idea why it happened – I mean, it’s obvious anyone would fall for you, and you know it, you great prat. What I mean is me – I’ve never done it with another man before, didn’t really think I ever would. But it wasn’t just that, the sex. It all started when I wanted to try to be your friend. Months ago now. I guess I got a bit carried away or something.’ Doyle grinned self-consciously at his own weak humour, aware he’d been prattling. 

‘And?’ Bodie said, hard. 

‘And what? I’m trying to tell you I love you, you dumb crud.’ 

‘So, now you’ve told me.’ 

Doyle found he didn’t have plans beyond this point – only hopes and expectations, all presumably unrealistic. ‘I suppose it’s asking too much for you to feel the same way,’ he said with heavy irony. 

Bodie shrugged. 

‘What – you want to think about it?’ Doyle reached out a hand in helplessness. And was struck by one wonderful possibility – if the sex hadn’t mattered to Bodie, he would never have banished the topic, he would never have let it happen again and again. If the friendship hadn’t mattered, Bodie would never have pushed him away. ‘Tell me,’ Doyle pleaded. 

Bodie’s hand grabbed Doyle’s, suddenly, and gave a demanding tug. Doyle eased across to sit beside the man. Silence, and Bodie’s hands enclosing Doyle’s, holding too tightly for Doyle’s comfort. The averted face was set, still angry. Even so, Bodie had a lovely profile. 

‘Tell me,’ Doyle whispered after long minutes. Hope and fear had his heart thundering. 

Bodie looked up, startled out of his reverie by the words, though his expression was still set. Then he leant forward a little, gaze dropping from Doyle’s eyes to his lips. Doyle summoned the courage to lean in and meet the man’s mouth with his own. 

Expecting the kiss to be sweet, Doyle was shocked by Bodie’s rough hunger. For long moments, he tried to respond to his partner, hoping that it was need driving him. Bodie’s hands loosed his, to fasten onto his shoulders, to push Doyle back against the sofa. The kiss felt bruising. Doyle reached tentatively for Bodie’s waist, unsure how to caress the man in this mood. 

Lungs clamouring for air, Doyle at last twisted his face away. Bodie’s lips and teeth instead worked down his throat. 

‘Bodie,’ he breathed. No response, except that the hands slid from Doyle’s shoulders to his hips, grasped them firmly. Doyle almost surrendered then – the sheer sensation of this man grabbing his hips, pulling him closer, tilting his pelvis and positioning him for sex, turned Doyle on unbearably. In one more moment, he’d be lying back along the seat of the sofa, pulling Bodie down on top of him, and… 

But even that wasn’t what Doyle most wanted. ‘Bodie!’ he cried, trying to get the man’s attention. ‘For God’s sake…’ Bodie finally stilled, face buried between Doyle’s neck and shoulder. Doyle took a long breath. ‘I was hoping,’ he said as evenly as he could, ‘to dignify this with the word _love_.’ 

Bodie pulled away, watching him sullenly, hands running back along Doyle’s thighs. 

‘Let me kiss you,’ Doyle asked. And, when Bodie didn’t either agree or refuse him, he sat up, leant in and met the man’s mouth again. 

This time, Doyle led the way. Bodie’s response was at first tentative, and then breathlessly gentle. Innocent, in a way. The kiss was perhaps the sweetest Doyle had ever had. He felt uplifted, transported. And scared as hell. 

At last breaking away, Doyle met Bodie’s gaze. And his heart dropped. If Doyle had been scared, a delicious fright – Bodie was obviously truly petrified. How the hell was he going to make this work? 

Well, the tender kiss seemed to have got through to the man. Doyle sighed. ‘Let’s go to bed,’ he suggested. 

This seemed something Bodie was surer of. Without further ado, he stood, took Doyle’s hand, and led him to the bedroom. 

Doyle let Bodie take the initiative again for now, let Bodie undress him before pushing Bodie’s robe off the powerful shoulders, before uncovering Bodie’s potent nakedness. And then Bodie was wrapping both arms around his waist, tripping them both onto the bed, lying over Doyle in a demanding embrace. 

Sure he’d never get used to the heady feeling of Bodie’s skin against his, Doyle let a few minutes go by; content to explore the broad back, let his own skin drink in Bodie’s warm scent, alternately succumb to and fight Bodie’s insistent masculinity, feel the tension of their mutual goal… 

Again, it would be too easy to give in right now, even though their unfinished conversation preyed on his mind – and afterwards he would, no doubt, be told that _it_ had never happened. Doyle tried to restrain his own reactions, tried to sooth Bodie’s driven need. ‘Hey,’ he murmured. ‘Slow it down, lover. We’ve got all the time in the world.’ 

Bodie lifted his head, looked down at him. Doyle couldn’t read the expression. ‘You wanted sex,’ Bodie said bluntly. ‘Why don’t we shut up and get on with it?’ 

‘I don’t want just the sex. I want –’ Doyle broke off, frustrated with his own inability to get what he wanted, let alone with his partner’s uncooperative attitude. He decided to try again. ‘Do you think you could love me?’ he said. ‘That’s what I came here to ask.’ 

Bodie shrugged a little, shifted off Doyle, looked away. ‘Actions speak louder than words,’ he mumbled, though his blank expression made Doyle wonder if Bodie hadn’t himself decided to simply give in. 

Doyle kept his arms firmly around the man. ‘You won’t say it? Don’t you trust me?’ 

‘Don’t trust myself, let alone anyone else.’ 

‘You put your life in my hands every damn day! Haven’t I proved myself _yet?’_

‘That’s different.’ 

Doyle lay back, puzzled. Silence. Bodie seemed to finally calm – he settled in at Doyle’s side, head on his shoulder. It was a gentle embrace, unlike the driven passion they’d shared, or even the loving after Doyle had defused the atomic bomb – this had more in it of friendship than anything else. Doyle came to a tentative conclusion. ‘You don’t trust your _feelings,_ you mean, let alone mine.’ 

‘I guess.’ 

‘Well, how the fuck are we meant to be friends, then, never mind anything more?’ 

‘We’re not. Doesn’t work between men.’ 

‘Is that it? This bloody stereotyped male thing?’ Doyle propped himself up on an elbow, tipping Bodie onto his back, and leant over the man. He said fiercely, ‘Well, to hell with that. Let’s be the exception to the rule.’ 

Bodie grinned faintly up at him, moved his hands down Doyle’s back in a light caress. ‘Typical, Doyle. Rebel with a cause.’ 

‘So, are you with me or against me?’ 

‘How can I resist a proposition like that?’ 

Doyle caught his eye. ‘It was a proposal, Bodie,’ he said seriously. 

The most Bodie would say was, ‘All right.’ And he leant up to Doyle, waiting for a kiss. 

Doyle obliged him for a sweet while, before pulling away again. He murmured, ‘Love you, mate. Won’t let you down.’ 

_Silence._ Then Bodie whispered, ‘All day and all of the night.’ 

Smiling a little, Doyle said, ‘Ah. The Kinks.’ His smile grew to a grin as he remembered the lyrics. That was exactly what he wanted to hear – _the only time I feel all right is in your arms…_ Soft as a breath, ‘God, Bodie, I love you.’ And Doyle kissed him. 

♦ ♦ ♦


End file.
